The recent article regarding ranchers in Montana lamenting the erosion
of their 'open range' benefits shines a welcome spotlight on a great
inconsistency. The self-reliant independence of the mythological cowboy is
a cultural fairy tale of interesting proportions. Open range is just one
of their time-honored subsidies, immunities from responsibility, and
dependency on involuntary contributions from others.

I have had to spend a great deal of time sweat and money working for
neighbor ranchers for no pay and no thanks. In order to help their
livlihood proceed without damaging my drinking water, fruit trees, food
supply and the public creek and fish I have worked long and hard at
fencing their cows out. It doesn't always work. I have suffered much
property damage from cows owned by private property zealots who proudly
proclaim their self-reliant independence.

I can't think of any other similar immunity from liability. If a
person's activities or domestic animal causes harm to another, that person
is held liable in every other circumstance.

I have a beef with this state-sanctioned bovine extortion. It's not
right, and it is unAmerican. My private property deserves protection and I
deserve compensation for damage and taking.

George Wuerthner's recent letter to Headwaters misses the point on
agricultural taxes in Sun Valley, Idaho. The plight of agriculture in the
interior West is of concern for all who value the open space that farms and
ranches provide, and the cultural heritage they represent. Local property
taxes can be a significant barrier to economic viability, in addition to the
many other pressures on agriculture in the West.

While subsidies to the industry are numerous, and often questionable as
Wuerthner argues, local property tax valuation is not a subsidy. Farmers and
ranchers pay residential taxes on their homes like the rest of us, whether
we are teachers, business owners, conservationists (like myself), or
retirees. Their land, however, often is taxed at its value for agricultural
production, not its development potential. This does not represent a
subsidy, because agricultural land does not demand the same services
residential or commercial properties require -- services such as education,
roads, fire and police protection, and health and socialservices. Every
ranch that is cut up for yet more housing increases demands on local
governments; however, development fails to cover the full costs of this
growth.

In Montana, three Cost of Community Services studies showed that
agricultural land actually pays more than its fair share of local taxes.

In Gallatin County, for every dollar in tax revenue raised, local
governments only spend 25 cents providing services. On the other hand,
residential property demands $1.45 in services for every dollar owners
provide in tax and other revenue sources. The subsidy, in the case of local
government services, goes to residents, not cows.

Idaho needs to recognize these facts, and implement an agricultural tax
reduction to protect farmers and ranchers from spiraling property taxes
based on increasing land values. The real problem is created by land
speculation which takes advantage of the agricultural tax valuation to hold
land for future subdivision. In this case, Wuerthner is correct. We need to
allow those farmers and ranchers who wish to keep their land in production
the opportunity to do so, but also hedge against land speculation and
subdivision -- the biggest threat to agriculture in the West.

California has made a step in the right direction . In order for
landowners to take advantage of agricultural valuation, they must provide
assurances that they will not remove their land from production in the near
future. The assurance is in the form of back-taxes paid (the difference
between the agricultural value of the land and its development value) when
the land is subsequently subdivided. As Wuerthner points out, easements are
another option to landowners seeking to avoid high taxes on their productive
land by lowering the development potential of property.

I agree with Wuerthner that if landowners are hoping to sell out, they
must pay their fair share of taxes. However, local tax breaks for
agriculture do not represent a subsidy, and can be critical to keeping farms
and ranches viable.

The recent article in the Spokesman-Review about the complains of
ranchers near Sun Valley who are seeing their property taxes rise highlights
yet another subsidy that ranchers in the West enjoy -- low ag land taxes.
Most property taxes are assessed on the market value of the property, but
not so with ag land. Most states tax ag lands at special rates -- in many
places even far lower than the federal government pays on its lands as
payments in lieu of taxes. I own a small lot and modest house in Livingston,
Mont., and pay twice as much in property taxes than a friend who owns a
ranch down valley worth $10 million dollars. The situation is similar for
most ranchers in the county.

Low ag taxes means everyone else must pay higher taxes to provide for
government services. Yet ranchers realize a huge windfall profit when and if
they finally sell their lands -- especially in places where land values have
risen due to their potential for development.

Ag supporters argue that if ranchers are forced to pay a fair tax rate,
they would have to sell their property. But there are other options. Placing
ranchland in conservation easements, forever removing the option of
subdivision, not only reduces its value, and hence taxes, but preserves open
space. Tax laws could be an incentive to encourage land preservation by
taxing all ag lands at true market value but substantially reducing the
property taxes for landowners who choose to put their lands in conservation
easements.

This would have several positive effects. A rancher who truly wanted to
keep their property intact would be rewarded with lower taxes, and in
exchange, the public would get a legal guarantee that open space would be
preserved. Furthermore, a rancher could choose to place any amount of land
in a conservation easement -- and still retain some land for sale as
subdivisions, if they choose -- but they would have to pay the taxes that
all the rest of us have to pay to hold on to such lands.

Ranchers always whine that they have no choices but to subdivide their
land, and they use this as a club to curry all kinds of favors from the rest
of us, including exemption from environmental review for things such as
water pollution, and maintenance of low property taxes. But ranchers do have
achoice, and it's time to call their bluff. If they want to keep
property taxes low, they can place their land in a conservation easement. If
they are hoping to sell out eventually -- then they should pay their fair
share of taxes like the rest of us..

Environmentalists and conservatives should both be cheering about the
decline in farmers and farmland acreage in Montana. Nothing destroys the
landscape more than farming. It is responsible for more endangered species
than any other human activity. It's number one source of soil erosion.
Number one cause of weed invasion. Number one source of habitat
fragmentation. Number one source of non-point water pollution. And no
industry gets more government welfare than agriculture. The less Montana
land farmed, the better.

The decline in Montana farming is a reflection of the basic unsuitability
of Montana for farming. More than half of Montana's farmland is considered
highly erodible. It should have never been broken by the plow in the first
place. It's basically too dry to farm much of the state. And agricultural
production in Montana means lower prices for farmers in other regions of the
country far more suitable for agriculture, creating hardship for everyone in
the industry.

The only way that Montana's farmers have survived at all is due to
government agricultural welfare. In some years more than half of the net
income farmers "earn" comes from government welfare checks. In the past ten
years alone, Montana's welfare farmers have taken in more than 3 billion
dollars in direct subsidies, not to mention the numerous other indirect
subsidies like low land taxes, tax supported agricultural extension agents,
CRP payments, and other goodies farmers and ranchers get from the public
trough. Had we redirected even a fraction of this vast amount of money
towards land acquisition, we could have taken many of tens of millions of
acres out of production and put them in public hands. No more begging these
welfare queens for permission to hunt or fish on "their" lands -- we would
own this land outright.

Indeed, taxpayers have already bought the vast majority of Montana's
agricultural lands ten times over. We just don't hold the deed because of
the nation's welfare farm policies.

If more people realized where their food comes from they would not shed a
single tear for another farm crisis. We grow all the vegetables in this
country on less than 2 million acres of land. We have 80 million acres in
feeder corn. All the fruits and nuts are grown on less than 5 million acres
of land, and we have 70 million acres going in soybeans fed to
livestock.

You get the picture.

We could afford to see 75%-80% of the farmland retired in this country
and still feed the nation quite well if weren't using most of our farmland
to feed livestock. Not to mention that there are tremendous opportunities
for Americans to grow their own foods converting even a small amount of the
typical American suburban lawn into food production would result in food far
healthier and fresher than depending upon America's intensive, chemically
intensive farm production.

Unfortunately, Mr. Rothman's perception of the rural west is incredibly
narrow and poorly informed. I can only hope he is never in a position of
power to achieve the ends he proposes.

Just why do we need the rural West? From a biological standpoint, the
variety of environments and habitats continue to serve important ecological
functions that, surprisingly to many, operate best under sound extractive
uses. While various efforts continue to search for ways to justify natural
resource preservation and uses with economic values, the real value of the
biological west lies in what it may afford many future generations in terms
of clean air, clean water, biodiversity (plants, animals, and microbes),
erosion control, and mental health. Yes, mental health. From landscape
architects and scientists to residents of the land, people have recognized
that open space and healthy natural environments afford necessary respite
from the stresses of our lives, particular for those who live in more
populated areas.

But Mr. Rothman's argument is most unsound from a hydrologic standpoint.
To dewater the rural west is to dry up the headwaters that supply the rest
of the country. If all the water is diverted to lowland and coastal cities,
the vegetation of the rural West will disappear, the wildlife will
disappear, and the soil will erode. I suppose Mr. Rothman would respond that
we could simply concrete everything to control the erosion but even the
Bureau of Reclamation recognizes the folly, i.e. flood problems of too much
concrete in a hydrologic system.

From a socio-cultural standpoint, we need the rural west in order to
preserve our cultural diversity -- from Native American cultures to ranching
and recreation. These interests, among others, are responsible for our
western landscapes that many of us, thankfully, still value as much as life
itself. Our land managing agencies are mandated as well to protect,
preserve, and in some cases restore cultural features and landscapes. Why?
Because the general public has convinced the various congresses over the
years that cultures and people have value that should be protected rather
than continually usurped for one dominant power. And landscapes are the
products of cultures and people who have developed sustainable interactions
with those natural environments. And the rural west is full of such
landscapes.

I find it sad that Mr. Rothman perceives the people of the rural west to
be arrogant, foolhardy, and without any redeeming or economic value. I find
it ironic too that while he criticizes rural westerns as having nothing to
teach the "rest of us," he offers little in the way of public education.
From his arguments, I'm led to believe that the only things of importance
are water and cities and that the loss of the rural west only means the loss
of a myth. Is this not an arrogant, foolhardy message with little if any
redeeming value? And one that has the potential, if implemented, to destroy
all the biological and cultural diversity that this country is built upon
and that we, as a generalpublic, continue to fight for?

I find it sad too that Mr. Rothman can propose such a rude, patronizing,
and insensitive solution even though he qualifies it as "only half-kidding."
Ranchers and farmers are not the enemy, nor are they the only residents and
users of the rural West, nor are they the only ones who value the rural West
as it stands today. His suggestion ishegemonious at best and to tolerate
or support it is to stand counter to the American ethic of cultural and
racial equality.

Maybe Mr. Rothman wrote his article to get a reaction, to get the rest of
us thinking and talking about what we value. I doubt it but I have to
suggest it as a possibility out of a reluctance to accept that he, and
potentially others, really believe what he states about the rural West and
its people. And if Mr. Daggett is the only reason for Mr. Rothman's
position, then he might try getting to know other Westerners and,
consequently, more of the rural West. He might also try to understand the
motivations behind Mr. Daggett's outburst, many of which resemble the
comments in Mr. Rothman's article.

Rick Krase's thinks he's being so cute when he asks whether I know where
my food comes from. Just because we all need to eat, doesn't negate the
facts -- agriculture is the single most destructive land use in the country,
vastly outweighing the impacts associated with sprawl. Most of us drive
cars, too, and this doesn't mean it's not appropriate to point out that cars
are responsible for air pollution, sprawl, and other associated impacts.
Furthermore, most agricultural production is devoted to animal agriculture,
not foods consumed directly by humans, and that's really my point.

A minimum of 1.2 billion acres out of 1.9 billion acres in the lower 48
states is used for agricultural production. No other human activity affects
so much of the land base directly, nor fragments more of the remaining
habitat than agriculture. Yet most of the agricultural land in this country
is used to grow grains and other forage fed directly to livestock, primarily
cattle. As I noted, U.S. farmers grew 80 million acres of feeder corn last
year -- that's nearly as much acreage as the entire state of Montana (93
million acres). Add to this is the 74 million acres of soybeans (95 percent
of which is fed to livestock despite its limited use for tofu and other soy
products). We had 110 million acres (an area larger than Montana) devoted to
pasture, and another 60 million acres in hay production. And the majority of
non-cultivated ag land is used for livestock grazing.

Given how much former wildlife habitat is degraded by farming and
ranching, it's not surprising that agriculture is responsible for 70 percent
of the species listed under the ESA. Agriculture is also responsible for the
majority of the soil contaminated by pesticides, the majority of water
pollution in the country, the majority of habitat fragmentation. Even a
small reduction in meat consumption by the nation would free tons of land
for restoration, free up billions of dollars wasted on ag subsidies that
could be used for acquisition of open space and wildlife habitat that is
currently being destroyed by the agricultural interests.

There has been a lot of media attention placed upon the effects of
sprawl. There is no doubt that sprawl can increase costs for community,
result in a loss of wildlife habitat and open space, increase a reliance
upon the automobile and have many other negative consequences. Sprawl needs
to be effectively dealt with. Yet many propose maintaining agricultural
lands and production as a hedge against sprawl without fully examining the
environmental impacts of agriculture.

Nothing has destroyed more biodiversity than agriculture. Sprawl is a pin
prick upon the landscape compared to the ecological footprint of
agriculture. Agriculture is listed as the major factor in the listing of 70
percent of the species currently on the Endangered Species List. Agriculture
is the major source for soil erosion. It is the major source of non-point
water pollution. It is the major factor in habitat fragmentation. The list
goes on and on. Yet the ecological impact of agriculture is virtually
ignored by the media and even most environmental organizations. Some like
the Nature Conservancy even promote maintaining agriculture as a desirable
goal -- displaying either ignorance or complete denial of biological impacts
of agriculture on biodiversity.

In terms of ecological foot print, agriculture affects far more of the
U.S. than sprawl. For example, according to the latest figures from the
USDA, urban development including all malls, factories, and subdivisions
occupies 80 million acres or 3 percent of the US land area. Nation-wide,
agriculture impacts a minimum of 75 percent of the landscape directly and
fragments an greater amount of land -- essentially making it useless for
many species.

One only has to look to Montana to see how this plays out. Despite the
growing problem of sprawl in the Bitterroot Valley, Gallatin Valley and a
few other places, according to the Montana GAP analysis, only 0.21 percent
of the state is urbanized and developed. By comparison, agriculture -- both
farming and livestock grazing -- directly affects more than 80 percent of
the state. How else can one explain the fact that 95 percent of Montana has
4 people or less per square mile -- in other words practically uninhabited,
yet we have many species like grizzly, wolf, bison, sage grouse, swift fox,
and many other species extirpated from most of the state. If agriculture
were so good for wildlife, than eastern Montana, which is dominated by
agriculture, should be a wildlife haven. Instead, most of the state's
endangered species survive in western Montana where the majority of people
live.

Certainly we have to eat, but food consumed directly by humans makes up a
small fraction of the land farmed. Indeed, last year all the vegetables in
the US were produced on 1.9 million acres. By comparison, we had 80 million
acres in feeder corn, 74 million acres in soybeans, 110 million acres in
pasture, 60 million acres in hay production -- all crops fed primarily to
livestock. And these figures do not even begin to count the hundreds of
millions of acres grazed by cattle.

The fact remains we could easily feed the nation and reduce substantially
the impact of agriculture by a major reduction in meat production. Groups
like the Nature Conservancy and others that advocate ranching as a means of
protecting the environment ignore the full ecological impacts of livestock
and farming upon the landscape, and instead are promoting a non-sustainable
activity. We should be trying to limit the ecological footprint of both
sprawl and agriculture. It's not a choice of either/or. We can and should
control and reduce the effects of both land use planning and zoning, and the
public acquisition of critical lands. The annual subsidies both direct (34.2
billion last year) and indirect (costs of endangered species loss and
recovery, water pollution treatment, etc.) of agriculture could be
redirected towards land acquisition.

If we focus on anything--we should be focusing on eliminating all
unnecessary agriculture. Trophy ranches and farms are just as bad for the
environment as trophy homes -- yet we honor the trophy rancher, and
denigrate the trophy home builder.

The Domenici proposal to allow livestock grazing to
continue pending BLMreview of its permits has been completely distorted
by environmental groupsand others. It is not intended to let ranchers
escape environmentalscrutiny; rather, it allows both the ranchers and
BLM temporary relief froman overwhelming situation.

The situation is this: BLM has decreed that all of
its permits must undergoenvironmental analysis before they can be
renewed. Approximately 5,000permits are up for renewal this fiscal year,
an unusually high number. Thelast word from the agency was that about
1,300 permits would not completethis review this year. That means 1,300
permittees will be denied use ofmuch-needed grazing lands simply because
the government has failed to do itsjob in a timely manner. Grossly
unfair.

Passage of the Domenici amendment would provide a
"win-win" for all sides.It would allow ranchers to continue their
operations without interruption,it would give BLM time to complete its
job, and it would provide detailedenvironmental analysis instead of the
rushed, short-cutted procedures thatmight have been used. Everyone
wins.

For those still on the fence, consider this-what if
you were among the 1300unlucky ones?

It seems to me the trouble with a lot of ranchers is they think they own
everything---even the public land they graze their cows on. I feel they do
NOT own the public land and when they turn their cows loose and unattended
on public land, then they should have to accept any losses themselves. But
no, they whine and wimp and cry to "control" (shoot) the wolf or the bear or
the mountain lion. What they really need controlled is their responsibility
to watch their cattle or sheep or whatever it is they send out there and
turned loose on their own for only God knows how long.

I would like to see all public lands taken away from ranchers. They can
just keep their cows down home on the farm where they belong. I feel I have
a part of public lands too, and I would like to see wildlife being wildlife
there, free and not behind fences. I would REALLY like to see the beautiful
land and clear water uncluttered with cow dung!!!

Re: Giving voice to the land in the ranching
debate from the Denver Post, posted on Headwaters 4/5/99.

April 5, 1999

Dear Editor:

It is indeed interesting that in a recent editorial, William deBuys
claims to be speaking for the land, and suggests that environmentalists and
ranchers should work together to save the West. In typical fashion for many
who see consensus as the new mode of operation, there is a distinct lack of
consideration for the land.

Livestock production is responsible for more endangered species, more
water pollution, more soil pollution, more loss of native plant community,
more introduction of exotic weeds, more extirpations of predators and
"pests" like prairie dogs, more dewatering of rivers than any other human
activity. If we were concerned about the land as Mr. deBuys says, we would
do a full accounting of these costs.

He demonstrates his ignorance or unwillingness to do such an accounting
in the example used to support his argument. He mentions the encroachment of
trees into meadows in New Mexico and blames it all on fire suppression, but
there is a vast amount of scientific literature that suggests that tree
invasion is due as much to livestock grazing that removed fine fuels and
grasses that carried fires and the competition for water that limited
establishment of tree seedlings as fire suppression. Mr. deBuys forgets to
mention this.

By ignoring the multiple costs of livestock production, industry
apologists like Mr. deBuys can suggest we can have our beef and eat it too.
Unfortunately, if we really did consider the land, we would quickly see the
fallacy in such an argument.Growing a water-loving, slow-moving animal in
the arid West makes as much sense as growing rice in the desert of
California Central Valley. You can do it if you get enough environmental and
economic subsidies, but we need to ask do we really need to grow cows in the
arid West? If we asked such a question first, I don't think one would
conclude ranching makes any sense.

Canada has finally introduced its endangered species legislation, the
Species at Risk Act. The bill is woefully deficient in all the key areas,
especially habitat protection.

Why should Americans care what Canada
does or doesn't do with its species? More than 80 percent of Canadian
species migrate or range into the United States. Species such as the grizzly
bear, Orca whale and Monarch butterfly. Species protected under the US
Endangered Species Act that face "open season" in Canada.

Canada has also helped the U.S. supplement populations of species at
risk. Canadian wolves, lynx and grizzly bears have all been sent down south
on a permanent breeding holiday.

No Canadian environmental organization is supporting the bill in current
form. In February last year, more than 640 scientists across Canada signed
an open letter to the Canadian prime minister calling for strong endangered
species legislation. The concerns outlined in their letter have not been
addressed in the bill.

So what's wrong with the proposed Species at
Risk Act, Canada's answer to endangered species protection?

In marked
contrast to the U.S. Endangered Species Act, the Canadian bill fails to
provide mandatory protection for critical habitat, allows politicians, not
scientists, to make final listing decisions for species at risk, provides
minimal, if any, protection for transboundary species such as grizzly bear
and woodlandcaribou, and abdicates primary responsibility for species
protection to the provinces.

Even worse, the bill is primarily
limited to federal lands and waters. That's a meager 5 percent of Canada, if
you exclude the Yukon and Northwest Territories. For species lucky to find
themselves at a post office, military base, Indian reserve, Coast Guard
station or national park, the prospects are hopeful. For endangered species
in the other 95 percent of Canada, life insurance is a hot item.

Environmentalists manipulate law to their own ends

Subject: Grizzlies in the Bitterroots

Date: Tuesday, Nov. 23, 1999

From: Richard Krause

I have read with great interest and amusement the stories you have
linked to regarding the Sierra Club's "Great Grizzly Search" in the
Bitterroot Mountains area of Idaho and Montana. If bears are found, they
reason, the Endangered Species Act would prohibit the introduction of an
experimental population of bears.

It is amusing because the American Farm Bureau Federation made this very
same argument four years ago with regard to the introduction of gray wolves
into the Yellowstone area and Central Idaho. At that time environmental
groups sided with the government and said the Farm Bureau argument was
wrong. Can we now conclude that the environmental groups have seen the error
of their ways and that they now agree with Farm Bureau that the wolf
introduction was illegal?

Or do we conclude that these groups manipulate their interpretation of
the law to suit their own agenda?

The recent article on Collins Pine could be misinterpreted like a lot happy
talk we read these days that resource extraction is environmentally benign or
even "beneficial" as some try to suggest. Certainly the tone of the recent
article started out giving one the impression that Collins Pine operations
were the happy coincidence where you can log and still preserve ecological
processes.

Unless you read to the end of the article, one would get the impression
that this timber company was practicing "sustainable" and "environmentally
benign" logging. If you visit Collins land you will find that it's better than
a cut and run operation, but it's questionable whether it is really
"sustainable" in the long run.

As the author noted, to "the untrained eye" it looks good. But a trained
ecologist or anyone who has spent much time in truly unmanipulated and wild
forests notes the differences immediately. The forest still looks sanitized.
Collins timber holdings have a paucity of down woody debris, as was noted at
the end of the article. It has few snags. There are roads everywhere providing
access for the spread of exotic weeds and access for hunters and others.
Important ecological processes like wildfire are minimized or eliminated.
Collins Pine forest may not be devastated, but it's not necessarily an
ecologically sustainable operation.

Fortunately the author did include some reservations about Collins Pine
operations, as voiced by Dominic De Salla and Roy Keene, both excellent
ecologists, but these were not presented until the very end of the
article.

The best one can conclude from the article is that the company has been
economically sustainable for a hundred years. But economic sustainability is
not the same as ecological sustainability. A hundred years is hardly a test
for a forest given that many trees live 500 to 700 years, and the consequences
of soil nutrient losses, soil compaction from heavy logging equipment
operation and other impacts won't be seen for several generations.

Is Collins Pine operations better than most other corporate timber owners?
Yes they are. Are they ecologically sustainable? The jury is still out on that
one. Is it a environmentally benign alternative to a wild fores? No it is
not.

The economic report on rural woes in the Columbia Basin ("Federal policies
cripple local economies, report says," Kalispell Daily Inter Lake, July 24)
displays either shoddy research or ideological bias. This is particularly
disturbing in that taxpayers in the four northwestern states underwrote this
report by Barney and Worth, Inc. The authors of the report clearly don't grasp
the reality of the situation in western Montana.

The report (available on the web at http://www.econ.state.or.us/new.htm)
states that declining private timber harvests have occurred due to "a decrease
in demand and increasingly stringent forest management rules." (p. 22). The
report specifically ties these declines in private timber harvest to federal
policies, as they are listed in Appendix C under "Federal Government
Influences."

In fact, the opposite is true. Instead of federal policies forcing a
reduction in private timber harvesting in western Montana, it is corporate
policies that have forced a reduction in federal timber harvesting. Over the
past decade, the Forest Service has been forced to cancel or defer hundreds of
millions of board feet of planned timber sales due to unacceptable watershed
and wildlife habitat conditions where intermingled private lands have been
subjected to accelerated and unsustainable logging levels. The Forest Service
has reported this situation in the Lolo, Flathead, Bitterroot and Kootenai
National Forests.

The two major timber companies in western Montana -- controlling roughly 90
percent of the private, industrial timberland -- embarked 25 years ago on
anunprecedented binge of liquidation logging. Both companies, Champion
International and Plum Creek Timber Company, freely admitted that they
wereengaged in unsustainable logging levels. After liquidating the vast
majority of its standing timber inventory in 20 years, Champion abandoned the
region for warmer climes and more productive forest sites. Plum Creek is in
the process of doing the same, announcing in recent SEC documents that it will
complete the process of "converting" mature and old-growth forests to young
stands in the northern Rockies. Harvest levels will decline appreciably while
these young stands take around 80 years to mature.

The short boom of the corporate logging era in western Montana is over, and
the bust period is about to afflict the region's timber economy. Global
markets and public log supplies are factors in the looming bust, but the
biggest factor by far is the behavior of the state's large timber companies.

Are the timber corporations shifting emphasis to the Southeast U.S.? Well,
yes, of course they are. They are right on script. It was entirely
predictable, and in fact it was predicted years ago.

I remember picking up a copy of the Wall Street Journal some years back and
finding a front page article about logging in the Pacific Northwest, which
includes western Montana. The Journal said that major logging firms had
settled -- temporarily -- in the Pacific Northwest and were reducing the
supply of standing forest "dramatically." At the same time, conservationists
were saying that the levels of logging we were seeing in our area was
unsustainable, meaning of course that it couldn't last.

The Journal article confirmed our diagnosis of trouble ahead. It said that
the big timber outfits would get what they could from the PNW forests, and
then go to the Southeast U.S.

The Forest Service acknowledged that something was afoot. In an AP story of
1992, a few years after the Journal exposed the industry's script for all to
see, Forest Service officials were quoted saying that the agency was
looking for a new career in recreation, at least in part because of "fewer
trees." The script was unfolding.

Now the chickens have come home to roost. After congressional spending of
tons and tons of public money to hasten the stripping of forest off public
lands, our region has lots fewer trees, and now the Southeast is losing its
trees too. We now must operate within much tighter constraints, and the
Southeast is losing its options.

Headwaters News almost always provides a pithy, insightful synopsis of its
featured articles and commentaries. However, that wasn't the case with the
June 6 description of the Vancouver Sun editorial about British Columbia's
ongoing timber battles. The description states that "logging accounts for
roughly half the B.C. economy."

In fact, B.C.'s economy is much more diverse than that, and timber plays a
diminishing role in the economy. The article actually said that timber
accounts for about half of B.C.'s exports. However, there's much more to the
economy than exports. Together, timber and mining account for only 12 percent
of B.C.'s economy, down from 21 percent in 1976, according to a recent article
in the Globe and Mail. High-tech industries are expected to surpass the
forestry sector within three years.

Despite its shrinking share of B.C.'s economy, timber remains important to
the economy. In large part, that's because B.C. is still mining the timber
frontier of old-growth forests. At considerable cost to wildlife habitat,
fisheries and water quality, 90 percent of B.C.'s logging is in old-growth
forests. Although some examples of sustainable or stewardship logging can be
found in B.C., most of the province's logging is mortgaged against a growing
environmental debt. Throughout the province, massive clearcuts mar the
landscape. The externalized costs of environmental damage are not factored
into the price of B.C. wood products that are exported to the U.S.

Fortunately, a growing international coalition of environmental and
consumer groups are demanding accountability in the market place. Especially
in Europe but also in the US, green consumers are boycotting B.C. wood
products from old-growth forests. This consumer action has brought B.C.'s
timber industry to the table, and in some cases is resulting in much better
forest practices.

American consumers should be particularly vigilant to the origin of the
wood products they consume. Particularly in the northern Rockies, heavy-handed
logging and road-construction practices on the north side of the 49th parallel
has damaged the habitat for our shared transboundary species. In particular,
American populations of grizzly bear and woodland caribou are imperiled to a
significant degree by forestry practices of our northern neighbor.

BC forests are rich and diverse, but they are threatened by the mad rush
for export dollars. With the help of the consuming public, B.C. can
sustainably harvest wood products without destroying the golden goose of its
beautiful environment.

Editor's note: Headwaters synopsis was inaccurate and has since been
corrected.

Dave Skinner does nobody a service with his article, "Montana tax protest
is a metaphor for rural pain." Before writing such an article, he needs to
check his facts and clean up his rhetoric. Let's look at some of his
allegations:

"The organizers canceled over concerns that neo-Nazis and eco-weirdoes
would crash the event and spur full-blown riots."

I won't respond to the neo-nazi part, but what is an "eco-weirdo"? We know
that neo-nazi groups threaten violence, but what is the purpose of such an
inflammatory label on the environmental community? Furthermore, if Skinner
would have checked, he'd find that no environmentalist or environmental groups
publicly stated they planned to participate in the Libby rally. All he
would've had to do was do a quick check to find out it was an allegation
spread by the organizers of the event, who are not environmentalists.

"... There are hundreds of thousands of acres of dead standing timber on
the Kootenai National Forest."

Perhaps now we are getting to the root of Skinner's motivations. This quote
is often dredged up by timber industry representatives who are irked because
the Forest Service has realized its unsustainable rate of clearcutting on the
Kootenai National Forest was putting species at risk and subjecting them to
legal challenge. The "hundreds of thousands of acres of dead standing timber
on the Kootenai National Forest" is a complete and utter fabrication. There
are tens of thousands of acres of clearcuts on the Kootenai, though. The
question is, is Skinner foolish enough to be used by capitalist resource
plunderers, or is he one of them?

"How would you feel if you had attended endless "stakeholder" meetings
trying to achieve "consensus," only to have those good-faith efforts blown out
of the water by arbitrary suits, mindless appeals and contradictory
rulings?"

Mr. Skinner, there have been no lawsuits on the Kootenai National Forest
that have ever stopped the logging of a single acre. And what of these
"mindless appeals"? This is more timber industry rhetoric. If someone files an
appeal, then it stops a timber sale if and only if the Forest Service agrees
the timber sale violates laws. Is Dave Skinner advocating lawlessness?

"Montana is dead last nationwide in per-capita income, and rural counties
like Lincoln County are even worse off, with above-state-average
unemployment."

Actually, this is true. Consider this fact, Mr. Skinner: the Kootenai
National Forest logged a higher volume of timber throughout the 1990s than all
the rest of the national forests in Montana combined. So why the desperate
economic situation in Lincoln County? It's simply the "bust" end of the boom
and bust cycle coming home to roost. The Forest Service, at the urging of
PAC-fed porkers like Larry Craig and Conrad Burns, has logged at what they
knew was an unsustainable rate, while at the same time they told loggers and
the communities that they could do this forever. The wealth of the forest has
been taken from Montana and the local communities by corporations, and next
the taxpayers will be asked to foot the bill to restore the ecosystems.

People and communities are "on the edge" because of corporate fascism; it's
not some nebulous United Nations plot. If Mr. Skinner purports to speak for
the rights and concerns of communities and people, then he should stop pushing
the corporate agenda.

The New York Times' report on forests lost to sprawl leaves something
out, but it still hits key themes important to us all. It leaves out that
forests are twice lost to sprawl, but the article nevertheless serves as
another guide to at least one of the needed solutions.

The Times reported only on forest lost as sprawl puts up housing where
privately owned forests used to be. It leaves out all the forest that falls
to supply raw material as the construction industry erects more real estate.
That construction boom has been taking down public forests, as well as
displacing privately owned forests. After all, who of us has not seen
numerous news articles that dutifully cite the number of nice new homes
that could be built as the Forest Service plans more logging sales?

This is subsidized start-to-finish, from logging to construction. It's a
stellar example of the recent American trend to "subsidized capitalism,"
itself a stellar example of an oxymoron. At the core of this, tax law
written by the U.S. Congress and approved in the White House. One keylog
here is a law that props up the foundations of sprawl. Last time I asked a
CPA, the keylog law was still on the books. Under this law, if you or I are
rich enough to borrow a few million for our luxurious new starter castle
in the woods, Congress in all its wisdom has decided that you and I are
eligible for a tax break.

It's no small break. It's up to a cool million bucks, per castle.
Thereby the taxpayer picks up the tab, not just for logging on the national
forests, but for sprawl, including sprawl into privately owned forest.
Forests get hit twice, a distinction shared with the national pool of cash.
So, already we've got quadruple dipping.

There's more. You or I would get that tax break even if our shiny new
castle was built on habitat important to survival -- or maybe in the case of
the grizzly, recovery -- of faltering wildlife species.

Species, forests and the people all pay for sprawl, and in economic
terms, as well as in ecological risks. But you and I get up to a million
freed-up dollars in tax breaks, while the construction and logging
industries get a costly boost.

I've been suggesting that there might a solution here. Look closely
enough at any problem, and the solution should eventually come walking out
of the shadows. It seems to me that the tax laws, made by Congress, could
use some constructive rewriting.

I found Stephanie Bale's statement that the USFS roadless initiative
("Quote of the Day" 5/10/00) is a dangerous proposition in that it "keeps
foresters out" of timbered roadless areas to be right in line with most of the
bilge churned out by the Intermountain Forest Association's (formerly
Intermountain Forest Industry Association) spin meisters.

What Bales and her cohorts like Cary Hegreberg of the Montana Wood Products
Association seem to miss is that this initiative creates outstanding new
opportunities to practice forestry.

In fact, this "new" protection (as if these areas became roadless) and its
attendant management demands will once again welcome true foresters back into
the forest too long closed by industry itself. These roadless lands present
foresters with opportunities to expand their practice by:

2. Learning and applying techniques for intelligent forest restoration to
return some already-roaded federal lands to a level of appropriate timber
output.

3. Envisioning the practice of forestry not as a static science of
production, but as a trade that creates and values services for ecosystems and
economies.

4. Developing techniques that capitalize on the ability and desire of
consumers to pay for value-added, higher-quality products from regional
markets.

I see a generation of foresters and loggers out there who would jump at the
chance to practice their trades in innovative ways that capitalize on the
opportunities afforded by our region and are sensitive to the limitations of
the land.

I don't advocate ending commercial timber harvest on the national forests,
and I feel that the roadless plan is imperfect. But I believe the roadless
initiative is a rational response to political, ecological, and economic
pressures.

Spin doctors like Ms. Bales cling dearly to the good old days, when the
timber industry ran our national forests. The public knows better that that
era was built on a house of cards -- a house of cards that has collapsed
around the feet of folks in small communities throughout the Intermountain
West.

Sure, we can rue the passing of the archetypal hardworking Western timber
town, but only to a point. A quick glance to the hillsides and the knowledge
that the industry has laughed its way to the bank (and to the greener pastures
of Chile, New Zealand, and the southeastern U.S.) can quickly jolt us out of
sentimentality, thereby getting us to roll up our sleeves and create new
paradigms for forestry, land management, and how Western communities inhabit
the landscape.

I support initiatives protecting remaining roadless lands and designating
the Missouri Breaks as a national monument. You should too. The debate is too
important to leave to the rhetoric of environmentalists, the motor crowd,
industry, and politics.

Had past presidents not protected parks and forests, there would be no wild
lands today. Back then as now many opposed designations. They were wrong, and
today we are grateful. Will future generations be grateful to us?

We are responsible. Yet we have roaded over 95 percent of our "Last Best
Place."

We are told that humans are part of the ecosystem and by implication should
be allowed freedom to do whatever, wherever. But our part can never be to use
everything as a resource or playground. Earth must be allowed wild lands to
clean and balance human life or we shall be poisoned by our own waste.

If we love our life, we can love the diverse life of all creation.
Four-wheelers or snowmobiles on all remaining wild lands, and making tree
farms, pastures or subdivisions of remaining forests is foolishness. We have
brains and should use them to manage ourselves.

Support protection for roadless lands and national monument designation for
the Missouri Breaks even if, as most of us, you spend the majority of
yourlife just working for your own family.

Robert Mullenix's letter is a good example of the anger and irrational
argument that has come to characterize opposition to the roadless initiative.
He states his dislike for "people presenting half-truths" (as distinct from
disliking half-truths). However, he offers an analogy regarding supposed "
roadless act" restrictions on access that isn't even half-true.

He describes a situation where "you couldn't use your back or front yard
... but could only access your house via the sidewalk"? Mr. Mullenix, do you
drive across your yard or up your sidewalk? I'll bet you wouldn't want to
damage your lawn or endanger people on the sidewalk. I would hope that you
treat public property with the same or better consideration you offer your own
property.

I see that in the context of your analogy you recognize that access isn't
just motorized access. There is no proposal that I am aware of that would stop
access to any public land.

I am responding to the recent letter of Robert Mullenix who wrote, rather
angrily I thought, in response to my recent column about the president's
moratoriums on public land.

Read the piece again, Robert, I do spread the blame around (even taking
some myself). In the column I mention ""divisive legal high jinks on the left"
and for good measure I threw in "irresponsible, partisan tinkering from ...
special interests here at home."

Perhaps you see the events of the past 20 years differently, but I think
there is enough guilt to share -- with the "state's rights ... shovels to
Nevada" crowd as the prime culprits.

Biggest impact on Forest Service has been threat of
environmentalists' lawsuits

I hardly believe that causing polarization by users of the public forest
and additional stress upon the Forest Service management is giving them a
break. Let's see, Pat, if I told you that you couldn't use your back or front
yard but could only access your house via the sidewalk, would that impact your
life at all? Think of that the next time you step foot upon your lawn.

I believe that Pat Williams has missed the mark with this very biased view
of the roadless act.

When talking of 20 years of toxic politics, not one word was mentioned
about the tremendous pressure placed on the Forest Service Management by the
environmental community. I would think that the following quoted paragraph
would at least mention the major source of lawsuits against the Forest Service
and it's management:

"Twenty years of Machiavellian machinations on the political right,
divisive legal high jinks on the left, massive political funding by extractive
industries that has bought not only shovels but also senators, continual
agitation by off-road vehicle professionals -- during the past 20 years they
have all combined to plummet the Forest Service into a management free
fall."

So why, Pat, have you chosen to completely ignore the major obstacle to
productive Forest Service management. I have experienced very poor management,
of the local public forests, simply because those in authority appear
terrified of another lawsuit from the environmental activists.

I don't even know why I take the time to acknowledge this article except
that I very much dislike people presenting half-truths.

The roadless area protection initiative has been widely -- and correctly --
regarded as a great boon for wildlife, and as a recognition that trees have
far greater value when left standing than when cut down. But there's
another great advantage to it.

While it hasn't been publicized yet, the roadless area protection
initiative will be a significant tax cut. Congress has never formally declared
a Logging Tax, for example, but the nation's taxpayers have been paying
one anyhow. Congress has spend billions knocking down the national forests. To
designate the still-roadless wilds as federally protected wilderness would
ban such costly spending regimes. This would free up money that could be
applied to America's schools, universities, Medicare, and Social
Security.

Over the past couple decades, one of the major weaknesses recognized in the
American economy is its lack of savings. That problem has been conspicuously
extended to its forests. Now we have a chance to give deeper meaning to
the old adages about "saving" our forests. What could be more conservative
than that?

"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." These words admonish us to
beware those who wrap themselves in the flag while actively working to
undermine the most treasured values and ideals it represents. "To defend the
Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic," are other familiar
words, part of an oath of service I took very seriously while a national park
ranger at Yellowstone, even when it entailed hazardous and depressing duties
such as law enforcement, firefighting, medical aid and search and rescue.

Frankly, I am disgusted when someone says I am un-American because I
support protection of roadless areas and recovery of species threatened with
extinction.

Recent events in our region give pause for concern. Witness the recycled
Sagebrush Rebellion, which has reincarnated itself as the "Shovel
Brigade." It has reorganized itself around opposition to roadless areas,
imperiled species such as the bull trout and the concept of public land in
general. It publicly uses patriotic rhetoric to advance its cause, but its
track record suggests a disdain for our democratic process and an unsavory
approach to civic discourse.

This band of anti-federal extremists has gained new life in recent months
by using the bull trout, federal employees, the National Forest Roadless
Initiative and public lands as their whipping boys. They effectively ran
Gloria Flora out of her job as a National Forest supervisor in Nevada with
their threats and intimidation tactics. They portray themselves as helpless
victims while harassing federal employees and seeking to privatize our public
lands for their own use. They have their shills in Congress who hold "field
hearings" which could easily be mistaken by the casual observer for an
inquisition or a prelude to a lynching.

Closer to home, anti-grizzly bear reactionaries have used boisterous
tactics to influence the public comment record on the proposal to reintroduce
grizzly bears to the Salmon-Selway-Bitterroot ecosystem. These tactics have
led the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to withhold the identities of persons
who commented on the proposal, citing fear of violence as their excuse to
sequester the public comment record away from public view.

At a recent public hearing in Kalispell on the roadless initiative,
opponents loudly booed and interrupted speakers giving testimony in support of
the plan, while offering little of substance to support their own views.

The message is clear: With such ugly forces at play, we can ill afford to
be complacent. Moreover, this challenge will not be won by the silent
majority. In our participatory democracy, if you do not speak, you will not be
heard.

I've often taken issue with Forest Service policies and decisions. Can it
be frustrating to deal with the Forest Service? Yes. Does positive change
occur quickly enough to suit me? Never. However, we can give credit to Forest
Service Chief Michael Dombeck, who has put forth the National Forest Roadless
Initiative for public comment and involvement, and to Senator Max Baucus, who
made a well-reasoned decision to support it.

This historic proposal holds great importance to the future of our region's
fish, wildlife, clean water, wildlands and quality of life.

The National Forest Roadless Initiative could ultimately protect the
remaining roadless wildlands in our region, and be part of a giant move
forward in the conservation policy America is developing for the 21st
Century.

Ironically, the timber industry, a major backer of the Shovel Brigade, is
now orchestrating a backlash to the roadless initiative by claiming it is
an imperialistic land grab by President Clinton designed to deliberately harm
rural communities. Ironic, because when Clinton first took office, he signed
into law the infamous Salvage Logging Rider, commonly known as "logging
without laws," described by The Washington Post as "arguably the worst piece
of federal lands legislation ever."

Basically, the timber industry got a free ride on the National Forests
without the threat of appeals and lawsuits from the citizen owners of
these National Forests. We got a good preview of how land management would
take place under the timber industry's plan. Logging without laws was almost
certainly unconstitutional, and the American public responded with a deafening
"no."

President Clinton, being the astute politician that he is, heard the
American people and he nodded "yes" when the Forest Service began the roadless
initiative. Having learned his lesson, this time the administration asked the
American people what they think. According to Forest Service sources, the
roadless initiative has generated over half a million public comments, making
it the largest public comment record in the history of land management.
Moreover, several national opinion polls show overwhelming support for the
roadless initiative.

Politicians and opinion leaders should not be swayed by the phony
backlash.

Those who wave industry-purchased shovels alongside Old Glory, while at the
same time shouting down majority rule, either don't understand the
constitutional brilliance of the founding fathers or, worse, they don't
support it. Our nation of laws, enacted through a democratic process, gives
access to the public but doesn't guarantee everybody everything they want.

Moreover, our system of checks and balances with three branches of
government means there will be citizen lawsuits to protect the
environment, including threatened species like the bull trout, there will
be proposals from the executive branch, and congress will also make its voice
heard. Its sometimes messy and inefficient but, as Churchill said, democracy
is the worst form of government, except for all the others.

The modern conservation era is barely a century old, yet it has much to
offer posterity. Wise is the culture that can stay its own hand when need be.
The failure to do so has been the downfall of countless civilizations and
regimes. As we make the transition to a new century, there is cause for
cautious optimism that we are learning from our mistakes and pushing for
adoption of sound land management plans based on stewardship, a sense of
obligation and respect. The National Forest Roadless Initiative could move us
toward a conservation policy that will once again put America at the forefront
of the world scene as a global innovation leader.

But don't take it for granted these things will happen just because it's
what most folks want. When forest supervisors are run out of their jobs
due to fear of violence, public comment records are squelched due to fear of
violence, and the will of the vast majority is stymied due to fear of
violence, it is clear that civility itself is on trial.

Our ongoing experiment in participatory democracy is threatened when
responsible discourse, the rule of law and fair and open public process are
thwarted by those willing to use intimidation and threats to achieve their
unpopular goals.

We're told from early childhood that calling names gets you nowhere. Or
does it? The future is watching. Raise your voice. Ultimately, much more is at
stake than trees. Let the sound of freedom ring.

Montana hunt depends on its wild lands

Subject: Development of roadless land

Date: Thursday, Nov. 11, 1999

From: John Gatchell

It was a great hunt. There were few roads, plenty of
game and no off-road vehicles. We hunted by day, camped under the stars at
night. My son and daughter were wide-eyed when I arrived home with the
hunter's harvest. The natural bounty of Montana's wild places will sustain
our family for another year.

The best of Montana's hunting traditions occurs
beyond the reach of roads and all-terrain vehicles, along the trails, rivers
and roadless wild lands of Montana. Montanans enjoy the longest elk hunting
seasons in the world. But long seasons, excellent hunting and healthy elk
populations depend on maintaining roadless national forest areas -- the very
lands where Sen. Conrad Burns is pressuring the federal government to build
more roads for timber and all-terrain vehicle sales.

When new roads and ATVs enter previously unroaded
wild lands, elk disappear. The first to go are big branch-antlered bulls.
Eliminate roadless areas as Burns suggests, and Montana's five-week elk
season will collapse, as it did on the Targhee National Forest, where elk
seasons went from a 44 to 5 days.

Four years ago, the executive vice-president of the
Montana Wood Products Association, suggested the loss of roadless elk
habitats could be compensated by shortening Montana's hunting seasons. After
all, he asked, " How many states have a five week rifle season?

As R.W.Behan correctly suggests, Dan Kemmis is dead
right when saying that local solutions are best. That much is indisputable,
and is not being disputed.

Trouble is, a varied and conflicting collection of
local solutions are available for review. Ditto for the many national
approaches that have arisen in the varied and conflicted environment of
Washington, D.C. A simplistic dichotomy between us and them (local vs.
national) is naive and, worse, an acquiescence to and a perpetuation of the
wedge politics that have fragmented this country and its various states for
the past two decades.

While Dan is certainly on target in recommending
local solutions, his remarks on Clinton's move misstate the situation. He
came out of the chute without checking his gear, made some ill-considered
remarks, offered a spurious dichotomy, a vague bogeyman called backlash, and
got jumped all over for his trouble. He recognizes that his remarks were
"inelegant" and, along with his statement that local situations are best, I
agree with him wholeheartedly on that.

Clinton also recognizes the crucial importance of
local solutions. It was, after all, pressure from local groups all across
the West that finally forced him to face the roadless controversy head on.
In Utah, for example, residents clearly wanted much more wilderness
protection than the state's congressional delegation would give them, so
where could locals turn? Similar conflict has existed between Montana's
registered voters and their congressional delegation.

The reality of the matter is not at all accurately
summed up in dichotomies between us and them, local and national. For every
Japanese manufacturer of ORVs wanting to sell 200,000 more machines for use
in the great wild woods, there are locals who loves these wonderful toys.
For every Big Green outfit based in Washington, D.C., there is a local who
is convinced that the Greenies in Washington are willing to sell out the
wilderness.

Like any mirage, the notion of local vs. national
approaches to environmental issues disappears on close inspection. The
upshot is that Kemmis and Craig are right, and that they misrepresent the
situation nonetheless.

The intelligent criticisms of Dad Kemmis' piece
about Clinton's roadless plan are refreshingly passionate and articulate,
and I commend the authors. But I think many of them miss the point of
Kemmis' argument.

Localized decision-making is not only more
appropriate for communities -- which, it can't be helped, is indeed the pony
that the wise-users love to ride. But it is also far more likely to protect
the sustainability of the local physical environment -- which seems often to
be of no concern at all to those same wise-users.

This is true because communities in the West are no
longer so thoroughly dominated by extractive industries. Missoula is no
longer a mill town. Bozeman is no longer a cow town. There are sizable and
formidable environmental groups in both, and they have accomplished much, as
one of the critics observed. The Rattlesnake Wilderness was not dreamed up
by a besmirched and dishonored president worried sick about his legacy, or
booming the candidacy of his phony-environmentalist VP: It was done by
localized initiative and competent politicking by local people who were
close to and knew about the land.

It is not the substance of the proposed roadless
policy that bothers Kemmis, and he makes that abundantly clear. It is the
process: The notion that some "national interest" can be perceived only in
WashingtonD.C., and the assumption that federal lands decisions must
originate there. On the surface that reasoning is plausible, but what it
obscures is the National Cattleman's Association or the forest industry's
tradeassociation teaming with Republican majorities to plunder the
wealth of the federal lands.

That so much of the Rocky Mountain West is overcut
and overgrazed is not the result of localized decision-making, but the
consequence of powerful lobbies in Washington making "wholesale" policy for
every "retail" situation throughout the region. Never mind that Clinton's
move is the most transparent, cynical, and hypocritical pandering, designed
to displace the memory of his impeachment. Suppose instead he is as innocent
and wholesome as a choirboy, and cares deeply for the values of wilderness.
This roadless plan has about as much chance of surviving as national health
care, another Clinton initiative (proposed and pursued with far more
integrity). Industry lobbies, their PAC money, and their purchased
politicians (excepting John McCain, perhaps) are still riding tall in the
saddle.

Yes, Honda, Polaris, and Kawasaki are enemies of
quality environments, and if you try to take them on at the national level,
Japan and Canada will haul you before the World Trade Organization tribunal
for imposing "non-tariff barriers" to free trade.

I live in San Juan County, made up of a number of
small islands and a whole lot of saltwater. Honda, Polaris, and Kawasaki
showed up here as jet skis, not ATVs, but we took them on locally and won. A
county ordinance prohibits their use anywhere in the county's waters. (We
may yet hear from the WTO, of course: those big corporations are patient and
rich.)

So for now, in the Rocky Mountain West, accept
Kemmis' challenge. Think hard, but more importantly think, to use Carlos
Castaneda's term, in new categories. Federal governance has become a
self-interested and self-sustaining industry, far more obsessed with its own
continuity than with the general public welfare, and hugely indifferent to
the well being of localized communities. It will go where the money is, and
nation-state solutions will always reflect the highest bidder.

If you do think hard and in new ways, I believe
you'll see that Kemmis is dead right.

Like I said, having our head in the clouds probably
does go with the territory here in Big Sky Country. And it is a good thing,
when we keep our feet on the ground. The long view from that vantage point
is as rare as it is valuable.

I certainly appreciate Kemmis' levelheaded
response to my shoot from the lip comment. Yahoo for a spirited and
hospitable Western debate.

I will stick by my statement that environmental
protection is just as effective whether "from Montana, or Washington D C, or
from aliens." Protection is protection. It is wonderful when environmental
protection does come homegrown, but, like food, if homegrown is not
available, you should take what you can get, even if it is imported. The
results of going without any are similarly permanent in both cases. Maybe if
we could eliminate the imported destructive forces, I might be able to see
the wisdom of foregoing the imported protections, but that isn't the real
world as it stands -- or falls.

Until such time as we locals and our politicians
become enlightened enough to protect the ecological foundation of life in
the West, human and otherwise, I will be open to help from any quarter.
Losses tend to be permanent and we can't afford to allow destruction while
the householders sleep. That said, it is critical to wake ourselves up.
Public education of the folks who live in the affected environment is
crucial.

As Director of the Center for the Rocky Mountain
West, which is home base for Headwaters News, I've appreciated the recent
outpouring of letters to the Headwaters editor about the Clinton roadless
area initiative. A large part of Headwaters' purpose is to provide a forum
for Westerners to discuss issues of vital Western concern -- and this is
certainly one of them.

While my Writers on the Range opinion piece was
an inelegant effort to express my own views on this subject, it was also an
effort to encourage dialogue of a slightly different kind than we sometimes
encounter on these natural resource and public lands issues. In those terms,
I think the discussion both in letters to the Headwaters editor and
elsewhere on the site has been of a very high order. Ed Marston's Writers on
the Range editorial was exceptionally thoughtful. I still want to (and will)
challenge Ed's conclusion, but at least he's put the issue of sovereignty
into focus -- the issue of how Western self-determination can and will
relate to national sovereignty.

I also thought George Ochenski's letter was very
helpful in terms of pointing out how off-road vehicles have become the
newest, most potent threat to wild back country. What I don't appreciate
quite as much is George's conclusion that it's time for Kemmis to leave the
ivory tower, or Larry Campbell's "head in the clouds" shot. I'll be glad to
defend my environmental record as an elected official for nearly two decades
in Montana, but I'll also defend my unshaken belief that sound thinking --
even thinking what your friends wish you weren't thinking -- is an important
part of how we put ourselves in the best position to protect places that
matter to us.

In those terms, I'm going to say that I find
Senator Craig's Denver Post editorial this last Monday to be a very
thoughtful and even wise contribution to the discussion. I don't like to
have to say that. I'd much rather believe that Larry Craig is just wrong all
the time. In fact, he's wrong much of the time, but when he says that "his"
people -- ranchers and loggers and other resource users -- elected to hang
onto their previous vision of the world in the '80s, and so lost their
adaptiveness, and that now many national environmental groups are doing the
same in resisting local consensus-based efforts, he's just plain
right.

He's a lot more right than Larry Campbell is when he
says that environmental protection is just as effective no matter where it
comes from, whether "from Montana or Washington, D.C., or from aliens."
That's just not true, Larry. There's a reason that "community-based
conservation" has become such a powerful movement, and it's an environmental
reason: It's because ecosystems are always going to be better and more
sustainably cared for when the people who inhabit them feel that they are
having a real say in their management.

My concern about the continued reliance of
environmentalists on national solutions is that it continues to make so many
Westerners feel as if they don't have that kind of control over the places
they inhabit. And that is why the West continues to elect so many of what
George Ochenski calls "outmoded, corporate stooge politicians." I don't like
them any better than you do, George. But frankly, Larry Craig is right --
one reason they're so firmly in power in the West is because, outmoded as
their narrow ideology so often is, it's more responsive to Westerners'
desire for self-determination than the truly outmoded nation-state approach
of so many environmentalists.

Or so I believe, and believe pretty strongly, and
will probably continue to say in one forum or another. I know it feels
better for all the "good guys" to sing from one sheet of music. But I'm
convinced that protecting Western landscapes is going to take all the
intelligence we can possibly muster, and that a little counterpoint now and
then might keep us from falling into the trap Senator Craig (of all people)
has warned us about.

I agree with Dan Kemmis that environmentalists were too quick to
praise President Clinton's promise to protect 40 million acres of roadless
America. But I think Dan made the same mistake they did. Neither he nor
the environmentalists he criticizes seemed to understand how much
showmanship Clinton applied to his press conference, and how little
substance.

Clinton is not going to be imitating Teddy Roosevelt. This is no
unilateral presidential proclamation. All Clinton has done is ask the
Forest Service to start the NEPA process, wherein the public is openly
invited to shape the decision about the 40 million acres. This public
process, open to all and any Americans, is subject to public reviews of
Environmental Impact Statements, over a period of many months. That's
democracy, and that's good, but it is hardly the kind of thing that Dan
Kemmis should be comparing to Teddy Roosevelt's bolder move of days gone
by. And it's nothing that environmentalists can declare as a wonderful
victory for wilderness.

But I have to be modest in saying all this, because Dan says that
Clinton's move is just another example of outsiders pushing environmental
protection down the throats of local interests. Well, my maternal
great-grandparents were married in Great Falls, but not until 1892, a mere
107 years ago. And I wasn't born until 1943, so I'm also just a late
arrival on the Montana scene, and I can't speak for the locals -- or at
least not the ones that Dan now represents so very righteously.

But, like many others born in Montana, I have welcomed every sincere
effort to save whatever wild, free country this state has left. I remember
a Forest Service memo that recorded a meeting in which one of the Forest
Service's own people said of the Montana woods that "We sure skinned a lot
of country." And they skinned it over the strong and energetic objections
of locals from right here in Montana.

The most curious thing about Dan's commentary is that he warns us to
shrink in fear of some unexplained "backlash" from the industries that
have dominated the forests for 25 and more years, if Clinton's shallow
showmanship does turn serious. I have heard of this "backlash" fear
before, but no one has ever laid it all out for me. Should I be afraid to
look under my bed? Will the industries encourage their minions to toss
bombs at us? Will the grocery stores fire all their people and close their
stores in retaliation for saving what's left of the wild open spaces?

When I look around at the once-wild forests, or at the once-wild
streams that now kill their own fish, thanks to logging that was taken to
extremes, I can't see where any backlash can possibly do any more harm
than what the industries have been doing already. It's not the backlash
that worries me; it's the forelash.

Maybe having your head in the clouds goes with the territory in
Big Sky Country, but most of us are forced by the necessities of reality
to keep our feet on the ground. Dan Kemmis has lost touch.

Kemmis ignores the fact that the threats and actual damage to
Montana's roadless areas comes primarily from out of state. And why
shouldn't out-of-state interested parties come to the aid of Montana
roadless protection advocates and our roadless areas? Has the American
West become so Balkanized that we are not open to the will of the
nationwide owners of National Forests in Montana?

And to say outside help harms the ecology is misplaced
philosophical b.s. Whatever helps to protect roadless areas here from
development will protect the health of our ecosystems. If it comes from
Montana or Washington, D.C., or from aliens the ecological effects would
be the same.

I believe Kemmis confuses political theory with biological reality. It
is unfortunate to see such fuzzy thinking given such wide distribution.

I just read a recent article written by Dan Kemmis about the roadless
area policy that the Forest Service will begin working on at the request
of President Clinton. If I had not seen Dan Kemmis's name attached to the
text I would have sworn it was written by a western Republican.

Kemmis implies that he resents people from "afar" directing the
management of federal public land within the boundaries of Western states.
This East vs. West rhetoric is a bunch of bull. America is one nation
under God. When veterans fought in WWI, WWII and Vietnam to secure freedom
for the whole country did it matter to Kemmis that many of those people
came from New York or Illinois? Or when these "Easterners" pay taxes
(which they do pay the bulk of) to help subsidizeWesterners' romantic
mythical lifestyle, do the Westerners throw the checks from D.C. in the
garbage?

Now Kemmis wants to tell them to mind their own business. Well, these
federal public lands are their business. Driving a national divisive wedge
into this issue is an antiquated argument that is used by the outdated,
misinformed, good-ole-boy politicians. For the sake of argument, how do
"Westerners" feel about this issue? A recent poll conducted by the Mellman
Group Inc. concludes that 57% of people living in the West believe not
enough of the nation's forest were protected from commercial development.
Nationwide, the figure goes to 63% of people supporting more wilderness.
How is this being stuffed down the throat of Westerners when most of us,
including you, agree with protecting the last roadless areas?

The resistance comes from the extractive industries who resent that
the federal gravy train, after 100 years, is finally slowing down. This
push to protect wild roadless areas is homegrown and has beenbrought
about because of the wishes of a vast majority of American citizens who
support the concept that "humans do not need to alter, tame, and develop
every last inch of this country."

In a speech to the State Bankers Association of Washington, U.S.
Senate candidate Thomas Burk argued: "The opinion seems to prevail in the
East that the West is opposed to the conservation of natural resources.
... The people of the West believe in forest reservation based upon common
sense and scientific principles. ... They do not believe in hoarding
wilderness. They do not believe in the sentimental fad that trees are
entitled to more consideration than human beings. ... The people of today
have a right to share in the blessings of nature."

Burk made that speech in 1910, but Conrad Burns could well have
plagiarized it last year. It is part of a time-honored tactic by
exploitative business interests to demonize conservation efforts (like the
reservation or protection of national forests) as something that is
unwanted by Westerners, and which is forced on us by the East. It's an
important tactical step, because it allows the Wise Use movement and
extractive industries to identify conservation with outsiders. In essence,
Wise Use sets up this equation: "If it's conservation, it's from the East;
if it exploits public lands, it's what we Westerners want."

And thus, for many Montanans, "environmentalist" is a dirty word
synonymous with "outsider," and conservation efforts, from Clinton's
roadless initiative to I-122, are dismissed without regard for their
merits.

Environmentalists need to challenge this false representation of
local views and federal decision-making. Innumerable Montanans have stood
up to fight roads in the Big Hole, logging in roadless areas of the
Kootenai, stop strip mining in eastern Montana, the proposed damn on the
Yellowstone at Livingston, to pass the Wilderness Act, to designate the
first citizen-proposed wilderness area in the nation, to protect Montana's
roadless wildlands. ... Say these names with me: Murray, Metcalf,
Mansfield, Milner, Bolle, Baldwin, Battin, Tawney, Craighead, Posewitz,
Weydemeyer ...

In contrast, outside interests from the Copper Kings to Kawasaki have
long stuffed exploitation of our public lands for outsiders' profit down
the West's throat. In his recent editorial, Dan Kemmis makes a nod at
local conservationists, but then, instead of challenging the Wise Use
mythrepresentation of Montanans' relationship to federal conservation
efforts, he panders to it byreiterating the old "conservation gets
stuffed down the West's throat and has since 1897" line. His goal, as I
understand it, is to shift the location of decision-making about federal
lands from the federal government to local collaborative processes. He
believes that shifting the location ofdecision-making will result in
stronger conservation decisions.

Despite my belief that the federal government does much to harm
Montana conservation efforts, I have very grave reservations about turning
any resource owned by all 250 million Americans over to a small group of
locals, equally grave reservations about how representative and fair
localcollaboratives are, and equally grave reservations about the
results of collaboratives. But I welcome dialogue about these issues.

What I don't welcome is Kemmis' promotion of a Wise Use myth to
make his case. In the short term, columns like those he offered harm one
of the few real opportunities for protection of wildland resources we've
seen in recent years (the Clinton initiative). In the long term, he is
stigmatizing and undermining the very conservation ethic that he believes
would produce soundlocal decisions.

Mr. Kemmis, please stop stealing Mr. Burk's (and Mr. Burn's)
lines. Make your argument about local control on its own merits, not by
preying on the ignorance and parroting the propaganda produced by the
"industry-financed demagoguery" you acknowledge. Your present strategy
will undermine local efforts to gain real protection for Montana's
resources today, as well as your own vision of local conservation in the
future.

Reading Dan Kemmis' thoughts about the political and ecological drawbacks
of Clinton's roadless areas preservation proposal, it seems old Dan is more
than a bit out of touch with what is actually going on out in the real world
(as opposed to the world of "theoretical politics") these days.

While Kemmis suggests we wait for a "western" solution, there is a huge
press by motorized recreationists and the industries that supply their
"toys" to penetrate every possible roadless area (including already
established wilderness areas) with "user created" roads.

If you don't believe it, try this quote from Steve Janes, publisher of
SnoWest Magazine in the October '99 issue: "After spending a day on the ski
hill, we decided the best place to find undisturbed powder was to go out in
the countryside and get down to some serious boondocking. Keep in mind that
boondocking in eastern Canada is nothing like boondocking in western U.S.
First of all, every time you leave a groomed trail in Quebec you're probably
either riding on private land or government land that has restricted use. In
the four days of riding in Quebec, we estimate that we violated around 652
laws or regulations. But since our crew's motto was 'if you can't break
parts, break laws,' we acted naive and 'wandered' off the groomed
trails..."

If you haven't picked up a copy of an ATV, snowmobile, dirt bike or
four-wheeler magazine lately, go get one. You will be shocked to see page
after page of ads showing vehicles plowing through axle-deep mud, crossing
streams, tearing up hillsides and flying through snowy wildlands at high
speeds. What the ads do, of course, is pump up the testosterone of their
motorhead adherents, who use machines to get them where they want to go in
the fastest way possible ... regardless of the impacts on lands, waters, or
other recreational users.

Studies routinely show that when motorized users and nonmotorized users
share a trail, inevitably the nonmotorized users seek other places and
abandon their trails to the clouds of blue smoke and noise that accompany
virtually every form of motorized recreation. What the ads don't show is the
trail of disaster left behind -- eroded hillsides, sedimented streams,
fragmented wildlife habitat and noxious weeds.

It's been some time since Dan was in the Montana Legislature and, from
the sounds of the column, also some time since he has been in Montana's
backcountry. The sad fact is, the funding provided by gas tax diversions for
"off-road" uses is fueling a continuing effort by Montana's own Department
of Fish, Wildlife and Parks to turn traditional trails into two-track
"troads" for motorized use. The Forest Service and BLM meanwhile, have
neither the budget nor personnel to police the existing "boundaries" of
roadless lands.

As one who has actually gone into the mountains to deconstruct illegally
built trails into prime wildlife sanctuaries, I am familiar with how easy it
is for these folks to simply go where they want -- all it takes is a chain
saw and a lack of respect for public resources held in common. Unfortunately
for Montana, once the damage is done options for "consensus" solutions are
often moot. Neither the Forest Service nor the BLM have the budget nor the
ability to control existing noxious weed infestations, let alone those
likely to spring up in roadless areas invaded by outlaw ATVs.

Similarly, when the last wildlife sanctuaries are fragmented by illegal
troads, where will the elk, wolverines, mountain goats and sheep find
safety? When the only limits are how much horsepower you can cram onto an
ATV or snowmobile frame, virtually no place in Montana will be "off limits"
to the motorized plague.

While Kemmis laments that Washington-based decision-making is outmoded,
his reference to timber and mining interests as the main opponents to
roadless area policies exhibits a startling lack of comprehension about
today's debate. Mining and timber are yesterday's opponents, Dan. Today's
opponents are Honda, Kawasaki, Polaris, and the Blue Ribbon Coalition who,
with their Congressional supporters, are making a stink in DC as well as the
backcountry over Clinton's move.

If we took Dan's advice and waited for a western solution to roadless
area preservation, the sad truth is that there would be very little left to
save by the time the West's outmoded, corporate stooge politicians decided
to act. Don't believe it? When was the last time Racicot, Burns or Hill made
a move to save even a tiny slice of Montana? Don't struggle with your
memory, the answer is "Never."

Time for Kemmis to leave the ivory tower and get his feet back on the
ground. Either that, or quit writing edicts that so clearly have little or
no basis in Montana's modern reality.

Note: Readers seeking a more updated view than Kemmis' may wish to read
my article "No Quiet on the Western Front - the Battle for Quiet Trails and
Waters" in the May/June '99 issue of Montana Magazine, or visit their
website at www.montanamagazine.com

Re: Central City students take on
gambling from the Denver Post, 3/21/99, posted on Headwaters News
in-depth section the week of 3/22/99:

Sat, 27 Mar 1999

Did any of the students bother to mention that the water in their town
is actually mine waste? To the tune of 100.000 gallons per day then 1/2 mile
below Central City, BlackHawk Dumps also into North clear creek about a few
million gallons per day. This causes the creek to run orangish yellow.
Ordinarily this would not matter but a few miles down stream this water body
becomes part of the drinking water for one quarter of a million people. You
tell me which matters more.......

Some folks blame the current fires and water shortages on lack of timber
harvests and reservoir building caused by environmental extremists.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Of the 12 largest fires burning
today in Montana, three out of four are in roaded, logged and developed areas.
Of the five most destructive --defined as fires which have destroyed homes and
other structures-- all are in roaded, developed and/or logged areas. The 12
largest fires have been ignited by wheat harvesting, ATV exhaust, Plum Creek
logging operations, rural homeowners, mining claims and lightning.

We are unable to cleanup past mining waste. A state agency reports high
concentration of mercury in Missouri River fish.

Human population burgeons. Demands on the planet's fragile environment
expand. And this hot summer is the first in 30,000,000 years that there is
noice at the North Pole.

Yet we want to ride OHVs, build roads and homes in the back-country or on
the edge of rivers and streams, cut what's left of our virgin forests, build
reservoirs and new irrigation projects such as the Sunny Brook Colony proposal
on the Marias, all like the cowboy who recently dragged his sick horse to
death behind his trailer -- as if what we do does not matter. And we willing
blame others for problems caused by our own uses and abuses.

Vice-presidential hopeful Joe Lieberman's words rang out to me during the
Democratic Convention when he said: "The new frontier lies within each of
us"

My daughter, Rachel lives and works as a nurse in New York City for
children with AIDS. I had written her complaining about our politicians'
inability to commit to protecting the fragile environment in which we live,
and she replied:

"Papa, I just read your e-mail to me and enjoyed hearing about your
activities and political/environmental concerns. I agree that our politicians
havefailed to instill the value of environmental preservation in the
American people; however, it is an obligation that we, as a community of
people sharing thecommon experience of an environmentally sustained
existence, must insist is as important an issue as health insurance and
federal aid. It must be equated in value and priority as an indispensable
factor in establishing a sustainable future for ourselves as human beings.

"Unfortunately, most people do not realize that the cash money that
frequently blinds their awareness to greater issues, was first a tree..."

The proposal by the Forest Service to salvage log recently burned areas
of the Jemez and Sangre de Cristo Mountains demonstrates its pro-timber
industry bias once again. I wrote a book about the Yellowstone fires, have
observed the effects of many other fires in the West and have watched the
effects of forest recovery. Based on what has happened in Yellowstone and
elsewhere, there is no evidence that removing trees hastens post-fire
recovery. Indeed logging hinders it.

Burnt trees, even those without branches, provide shade for new tree
seedlings. The snags also provide some minimum cover for wildlife, reducing
vulnerability to hunting. The snags also reduce wind and thus provide some
positive thermal cover for wildlife in winter.

Removal of burnt trees removes snags that are essential for
cavity-nesting birds. Typically more than 25 percent of the bird species
found in the West are cavity-dependent. Mammals like bats and squirrels also
depend upon cavities. When the snags fall on the ground, they provide hiding
cover for numerous insects and small mammals like voles and even pine
marten.

Snags falling into creeks provide essential habitat for aquatic insects
and fisheries, and help to stabilize banks. Down logs, especially if they
fall across the slope, act as mini erosional check dams. The down woody
debris releases nutrients slowly into the soil and water as they decompose
over decades. All of these benefits are lost when trees are removed through
logging operations.

Furthermore, the impacts of logging equipment on the landscape must be
considered as well. Logging trucks and skidders compact soils, reducing
water infiltration. The disturbance breaks up crusts that develop after
fires and protects the soil from erosion. Logging equipment and roads also
create vectors of disturbed soil that is a natural seedbed for weeds, and
the equipment often carries weeds. Studies have demonstrated that logging
roads, even closed logging roads, provide easier access for ORVs and even
hikers--often negatively affecting hunted wildlife species.

These are only a few of the multiple impacts that results from salvage
logging. Selling timber at bargain basement prices and then introducing a
host of new ecological impacts makes for poor public policy. The Forest
Service is playing upon people's emotions and generally poorly informed
positions about fires as an excuse to do more logging instead of allowing
the burned areas to recover.

Former Congressman Williams is absolutely correct in defining my
previous missive as a "blunt personal attack." See, in politics, we
citizens aren't able to micromanage every decision or vote or negotiation
or compromise. Instead, we have to try to take a personal measure of those
who wish to represent us (like we were actually ready to vote for a woman
for Governor) vote for with the best "person" for the job, and hope to
hell we guessed right.

As Williams suggested, I revisited his Rehberg column. No matter how
carefully, diplomatically, politically dialecticized the sentence
structure, Williams characterized Rehberg -- former Senate chief of staff,
Montana lieutenant governor, etc. -- as a close-minded political naif.
That it was said nicely makes no difference ... It was still a bombshell
tossed from afar, just like most of the political bombs dropped on
Montanans and other Western citizens from out-of-state courtrooms, faraway
federal bureaucrats, rich social engineers and their foundations, big-city
newspaper editorial boards, urban-based Green organizations, and mercenary
corporate tycoons.

I just want to bring up a quick personal example related to the
"Shovels to Nevada Brigade" -- actually the Jarbidge Shovel Brigade --
organized by Eureka lumberman Jim Hurst. One of our local enviros
approached the Montana Wilderness Association about having Hurst meet with
the MWA board. Jim told me that MWA turned the proposal down because
actually having face time with Jim would make him harder to
"demonize."

Oh man, that's just sick -- but it explains why Greens are so touchy
about "personalizing" these issues.

Mr. Williams, any time you are ready for coffee. ... I promise to leave
all my handguns at home..

My criticism of Pat Williams may have indeed been off the mark. I
was disappointed in him for not making a warning that he says he made.
Well, in that case, he's right that I don't remember it. Somehow, in
the midst of the logging boom that took the state and region, with the
many headlines that followed, I missed his warning. And, for that, I owe
him an apology.

I also owe him a phone call, to ask about getting hold of the
warning(s) he issued, because I'm still very curious about how it came
about that his and similar warnings were ignored in the passions of a
logging boom that wrought multiple abuse for Montana all the way from its
workers to its wildlife.

I suppose it is incumbent upon me to defend myself against the blunt
personal attack in the recent letter from Dave Skinner of Whitefish and a
much lesser charge by Lance Olsen.

Mr. Skinner, I assume, is on the right, politically. At least one can
infer from his angry rhetoric about "leftist Greens" that he isn't part of
any political liberal wing. It is standard stuff for the Right to
personify their troubles and relieve their anger with personal attacks on
those with whom they disagree. The most obvious example is their drumbeat
of eight years of sharp personal invective toward former President
Clinton, but some of us lesser lights have also grown used to their angry
rhetoric and mean personal attacts.

My column contained a simple suggestion made to incoming Congressman,
my friend, Dennis Rehberg of Montana and was emphatically not an
"evisceration" of him., as Mr. Skinner claimed it to be. I suggest that
readers get the column and read it again; Skinner's charges are ludicrous
on their face.

Mr. Skinner, three times, refers to me as "elder statesman" and then
makes light of the phrase. I'm not, nor do I try to be, an elder
statesman. I like Harry Truman's definition of that phrase: "Elder
statesmen are nothing more than dead politicians." I didn't leave my
position as Montana's congressman to return to this state and hide out in
the hopes of being remembered for my polite silence. It may take some time
for the Right to get used to it but I'm a very live politician who is
running neither for nor from anything.

Mr. Skinner, in his petulance, couldn't resist mentioning that indeed I
had left Congress and that he is "one of many Montanans glad for it." I
have no trouble with that so long as he remembers one other thing:
Montanans always knew where I stood on the issues , particularly the
critical issue of public land management . They elected and re-elected
this conservationist, this environmentalist, if Skinner prefers, to the
U.S. House of Representatives more consecutive times then any other
Montanan in our state's history , often by handsome margins.

Compared to Mr. Skinner, Lance Olsen's criticism of my congressional
policy is very mild, complaining only that I did not "step forward" to
warn about the glut of tree harvesting ongoing in the 1980s and its long
term ramifications to our timber workers . I did indeed make those
warnings. I'm sure Mr. Olsen doesn't remember my warnings but they were
there nonetheless. Some people apparently live in a forest in which trees
don't fall unless they personally hear them topple.

It is interesting that neither Pat Williams nor Dave Skinner stared in
the face of the financial realities that have been governing the timber
trade in the past twenty years. Williams focussed on Denny Rehberg, and
Skinner focussed on Williams. Wall Street's view is more instructive than
Williams' or Skinner's.

A look at the financial side offers lots
more support to Williams than to either Rehberg or Skinner, although
Skinner's worry about "helpless Montanans" does ring true. Fact is, the
timber industry wants to sell its goods at a higher price to the consumer.
To do that, the industry has been gaining concentrated control that
eliminates competitors, so that consumers can't shop around for lower
prices.

From Wall Street's point of view, the logging and paper
companies actually "need" to buy up competitors, and need to do that just
to shut down competitors' mills. As the mills are shuttered, people all
across our region lose their jobs, kingpins of the industry lock up
control over supply, and we flirt with monopoly control. That's when we
all become vulnerable to higher prices.

Ordinary Montanans working
in the timber industry have indeed been left helpless, largely because no
one has been willing to tell them what has been going on in their
industry, and no politician including Pat stepped forward to warn them
when the logging boom began in the 1980s. Instead, record levels of timber
flowed off the mountains, into the mills, and kept prices low enough to
starve the smallest competitors. Now, the larger surviving competitors are
themselves disappearing fast in merger and buyout that iskilling the last
of the competition, and handing price control to the major corporate
players.

From Wall Street's point of view, the past twenty years
of logging boom have been lousy business, just because there were too many
mills. With too many mills, prices (and therefore profits) were kept down
and shareholders, including pension funds and insurance companies,
couldn't make big money. Now that's changing, but Skinner does little to
help Montanans understand what's happened to us.

Pat's attack column on (Montana Conressman Dennis) Rehberg's forum was
completely uncalled for, yet true to form for Williams. I thought it was
pretty gutless to claim "We wish [Rehberg] well" and then eviscerate the
man like he's some kind of naif in need of guidance from the benevolent
elder statesman.

Well, elder statesman is often used euphemistically.

It may come as a shock to Williams, but Montanans, despite the diligent
efforts of the press to prevent it, have just as much access to relevant
information as he and are just as capable of keeping an open mind as
Williams ever was. Furthermore, most of us are capable of deciding for
ourselves what course of action to take.

Had our esteemed elder statesman (another euphemism) had the guts to
show up for the forum and "listen with an open mind," he might have
understood that many Montanans aren't about to be herded in the direction
he and his foundationally funded elitist Green and leftie cronies
want.

Nor are many credulous enough to unquestioningly believe the saw about
"local control." The local control Williams refer to is that of
two-and-three person environmental "grassroots organizations" tapped into
not only the foundational money train (and the strings attached by
grantmakers in their corporate boardrooms) but the NEPA provisions
(written by Sierra Club lawyers and lobbyists) mandating no bonding and
payment for upheld appeals.

These laws have rendered the real "average local citizens" of Montana
completely helpless before an avalanche of stupid lawsuits and the threat
of fire and disease. Those who lack a law degree, foundation grants and/or
a trust fund are completely irrelevant to the process that Williams terms
"local control," yet they are the ones who suffer the consequences.

We're talking outside and taxpayer-funded -- not average-local-citizen
-- Green professionals who have no stake in the success of the state.
Their meal ticket lies elsewhere.

All Williams' maunderings manage to accomplish is reminding us why he's
no longer a congressman from Montana, and I am merely one of many
Montanans damned glad for it.

Montana environmental law is cost-benefit analysis industry
should love

The Montana Environmental Policy Act is a nationally signficant tribute
to state's rights and local control. Patterned somewhat after the
less-backboned National Environmental Policy Act, MEPA is of substantial
importance because it requires that government agencies put all the cards
on the table for all to see.

The purpose of making agencies do
this is to eliminate or at least reduce the prospect that an agency might
be tempted or pressured into sneaking something past the public's
attention. In the language of law, this is called "disclosure." In the
world of investments, where shareholders also seek the right to know, it's
also referred to in terms of "transparency," and widely regarded as a
basic condition of a legitimate company or a legitimate market.

The economic value of transparency is pretty transparent in
itself. For example, taxpayers and investors both need to know if some
action will end up costing them money in the future, as when a logging
road fails and requires costly cleanup. Under MEPA, then, any state agency
about to approve another logging road would have to put all the cards on
the table, and "disclose" the likely costs.

It is comic to see
industry seeking change of MEPA. Over and over again, industry heads,
sympathetic politicians, and chamber of commerce spokespersons have been
singing the virtue of cost-benefit analyses in environmental
controversies. If they meant what they've said about the importance of
doing cost-benefit analyses, they'd be bristling in anger at any proposed
changes. But maybe they've discovered the curse of getting what they
wished for.

Carl Bergman, in his response to my letter about us in Montana having
only one member of the U.S. House of Representatives, has it exactly right.
The residents of Washington, D.C. are, in fact, the most under-represented
citizens in the entire United States.

And as long as the political demagogs are loose to condemn everything and
anything federal and related to D.C. that sorry condition will not
change.

Certainly, the solution to the D.C. voting problem is not simple. Should
it become a part of Virginia? Their citizens seem to reject that solution.
Same thing with Marylanders.

Should D.C. become it's own state? There seems to be significant
objection to that across the country. Thus, as with many problems of equity,
the fix isn't easy. However, one should absolutely be found.

Having half a million American, taxpaying citizens with no vote in their
own Congress is an outrage against our republic. Thanks, Carl Bergman for
setting me, and perhaps a few others , straight on that one.

Pat Williams makes a strong case for either changing the congressional
apportionment formula so Montanans aren't underrepresented, or increasing
the size of the House. However, regardless of Montana's plight, I and
590,000 other Americans can claim that, in his words, "No people in America
are as numerically underrepresented as are we."

This is not to say that he has not made a case. I know exactly what he
means. In the '60s, I lived in Georgia's 5th District, the second largest in
the country. Only Dallas had it worse. The 5th was Atlanta's and the
antiurban legislature had no desire to give us fair representation. The
Supreme Court's one-person, one-vote rulings outlawed their rigged plan, and
we went from one House district to two.

However, there is something much worse than under-representation:
non-representation. Half-a-million, full tax-paying District of Columbia
citizens have no vote in the House or Senate. If you think Congress foots
our bill, guess again; we not only pay all federal taxes, but also have high
local income, property and sales taxes. There used to be a federal payment
to D.C. to cover the cos, but it's gone. Nevertheless, every penny of our
locally raised money must pass congressional and presidential muster. How
would you like it if your school budget had to go through the White House to
get to the third grade? Ours does.

Why don't I leave? Same reason Montanans don't leave over representation.
I live here and I want it fixed here.

Overlooked in this debate about Nader's impact on the election is the
fact that many if not most of Nader's supporters actually voted for Al Gore.
In fact, Naderites around the country restrained their desire to help nudge
Ralph over the 5 percent hurdle in all of the key swing states, Florida
included. Less than 2 percent of Florida voters cast a Nader ballot, and
most of them probably wouldn't have bothered to vote at all had it not been
for Nader.

Thanks to tactical voting by large blocs of Nader voters in green-heavy
states, Gore won virtually every state with a deep Green presence: Oregon,
Wisconsin, New Mexico, Maine, Minnesota, Michigan, Washington and
California. The only exception is New Hampshire, where a good showing by
Nader (4 percent) may have tipped the balance to Bush.

Because most Nader supporters voted for the good rather than the perfect
(in the parlance of my friend, Pat Williams), Nader received a greater share
of the votes in Bush-dominated Utah than emerald Oregon, more in
Gore-hostile Montana than green-cheese Wisconsin, and more in Don Young's
Alaska than fern-feeling California.

In those Bush-dominated western states, many Gore supporters realized
their vote had more symbolic and tactical importance cast for Nader. In
fact, in the weeks preceding the election, countless numbers of Gore
supporters in Bush-dominated states swapped strategic votes with Nader
supporters in swing states. I personally know of many frustrated
conservationists around the country who changed their vote from Nader to
Gore in the last week to avoid playing the role of spoiler.

These NaderTraders and tactical voters in Oregon and Wisconsin, Minnesota
and Washington and California did their job in making sure Gore did not lose
their state's electoral votes because of Nader.

If Gore had lost all or even most of the green-leaning states that
Democrats fretted most about, then I'd be more sympathetic to Pat Williams's
harsh condemnation of Nader voters. But Gore didn't lose those states.
Instead, he lost Florida and Tennessee and Missouri and Ohio, where the
Nader vote was tiny.

Nader was a factor in Bush's electoral victory, but only a minor factor.
In fact, I commend the tactical votes of most green voters, who by and large
were savvy about the political realities in their home states.
Unfortunately, it wasn't enough. The primary culprit in the Bush victory was
the Democrats' lackluster message to a cynical electorate, Clinton's
shameless sexual shenanigans, Florida's ballot-box inequities, a partisan
Supreme Court, and Gore's own tactical mistakes, including his failure to
win his home state of Tennessee.

The irony of the matter is this: Responsible and tactical voting by Nader
supporters who voted Gore in key battleground states kept Nader well below
the 5 percent threshold, all but eliminating a major force for campaign
finance reform and a more progressive and populist Democratic message in the
future. Without that extra nudge from its Green flank, I don't know if the
Dems can make the political shift that they so urgently need.

Of course Pat Williams is absolutely correct in his analysis of the Nader
fiasco and his traitors. They will forever be designated by their enemies
and relegated by their former friends to the fringes of modern politics.
They have marginalized themselves and their ideas. I mean, think about it
for a moment. Ralph Nader is supposed to be a very smart guy. But how smart
is he to adopt the tactics and arguments of his enemies, and then use them
on his natural allies, which is exactly what Ralphy has done. Imagine that.
Ralphy boy, a Limbaugh clone. It has to be the ultimate irony.

Nader has relentlessly accused the Democrats of being exactly the same as
the Republicans, never stopping to acknowledge that the real Republican
party no longer exists, having been replaced long ago by the extreme right
wing. Why has Ralph done this? Is it because of overweening stupidity?
Possibly. But I think that Nader, like so many other people with poorly
developed critical thinking skills and the inability to withstand the right
wing barrage of propaganda, simply bought into the right wing paradigm,
which consists of a carefully calculated, purposely cultivated cynicism
designed to destroy our faith in the only institution in which every citizen
has a voice, and in which the average citizen has any chance at all of
defending himself from the corporate onslaught, the government itself.

Ralphy boy, by adding his voice to the din of the chorus that says
"government is bad, government is not working" makes it that much easier for
the corporate fascists to succeed. These people don't want democracy to
work, because they stand ready to replace it with something of their own
design. Ralph has picked up their mantle of cynicism and used it as a weapon
against his former friends, who are simply playing the hand they were
dealt.

Let's face it. The fascist takeover has not occurred overnight. You, the
people gradually allowed it to happen. You did not fight against right wing
advances at every level of public participation. You failed to acknowledge
the inroads they were making and challenge them at every turn. So it's a
little late now for the wringing of hands, which does about as much good as
voting for a quixotic crusader with delusions of grandeur.

Nader and his traitors will never again have a salient role in the
determination for one reason and one reason alone. They have forgotten who
are the loyal opposition and who are the enemy. We Dems got Ralphed on.

Of course Nader's election raiders are upset with my column zeroing in on
Nader's tragic mistake in running for president. They protest too much ...
but understandably. After all, they elected George W Bush to the
presidency.

Certainly Al Gore could have run a different race and ,yes, some would
have preferred a little more good old Democratic Party give 'em hell
rhetoric. I got elected to the U.S. Congress running against conservative
tides here in Montana nine consecutive times from 1978 to 1997. I did it by
keeping the liberal coalitions together. So, had I been an adviser to Al
Gore, I would have had him run a somewhat different campaign from the
outset. So what?

The point here is clear, Nader and his raiders elected George Bush. Gore
didn't do it, they did it, with more than a nudge from a compliant Supreme
Court.

The Nader people are embarrassed and they ought to be. Their guy ran a
very poor campaign.

The results are damaging to the environmental efforts, to future Green
Party campaigns and , of course, worst of all, they have elected to the
presidency a man of limited competency, a lack of direction and a Texas
conservative's view of the nation. Nader and his election raiders have made
the perfect enemy of the good -- not that Nader is perfect, don't get me
wrong on that one.

Pat Williams's guest editorial is sure to be one of many hit pieces
blaming Ralph Nader and the Green Party for Gore's defeat. It is
infuriating.

As Tom Tomorrow wryly pointed out in "This Modern World" a few weeks ago,
the obscure "Worker's World" party received approximately 1,500 votes in
Florida, which turns out to be three times the number of votes Gore needed
to win Florida. The nerve of those people, they handed the election to Bush.
I mean otherwise, they surely would have voted for Gore, right?

Seriously though, Gore and the Democratic party have only themselves to
blame for defeat. With Clinton at shockingly high approval ratings, the
celebrated economy continuing to expand to ever more dizzying heights, and a
Republican opponent who is not only an obvious puppet but an intellectual
embarrassment, why was the race so incredibly close in the first place? This
is a question without a clear answer, but blame clearly does not lie with
Nader and his 20-year-old suits.

Progressive people who came of age (I'm 30) in the Reagan and
George-senior era held high expectations for Clinton and the man who wrote
"Earth in the Balance." Instead we received eight years of centrist politics
and policy from an administration with no discernible allegiance to
meaningful principles or ideals. I remember Gore's biggest promise during
Clinton's race was to close down a hazardous waste incinerator, owned by the
notorious Waste Management, in East Liverpool, Ohio. This never happened.
Not surprisingly, Gore did not campaign in East Liverpool this year.

Some defining elements of the Clinton/Gore administration which I
fundamentally disagree with: sabotage of the Endangered Species Act
(including continual budgeting of less money to Fish and Wildlife Service
than Bush Sr.), aggressive pursuit of the War on Drugs which has resulted in
the U.S. having the highest prison population in the world and has
alarmingly included military exercises within our borders, nauseatingly
infrequent prosecutions of environmental polluters under the Clean Water and
Clean Air acts, passage of NAFTA without any meaningful environmental or
labor sideboards, similar actions with respect to the WTO and now the FTAA,
passage of the Welfare Reform Act, continued bombing of Iraq, refusal to
make any meaningful concessions regarding the Kyoto treaty at the recent
Hague meetings, an almost complete cessation of auditing or any sort of tax
oversight of large corporations in general, and fortune 500 companies in
particular, and the list goes on. Do we really believe that the election of
Gore would signal a bold new era?

The media is of course full of talk about the need for Dems and Repubs to
mend their fences. I think the Dems and the Greens also have some talking to
do, and the Democrats would make a huge mistake by falling back into the
simple and comforting path of blame. Greens are not perfect, but they are
also not stupid, so Gore supporters should start listening up and stop
treating them with arrogance and condescension. With Bush in office, we all
need all the help we can get.

While I agree with Pat Williams (12/15) that votes for Nader in Florida,
and elsewhere, could well have put Gore over the top, he says nothing about
Gore's role in losing those votes to Nader. First and foremost, I
would say that's where blame should rest. But Gore wasn't alone.
Blaming Nader is a way to duck responsibility for people who had a hand in
Gore's campaign (particularly the decision to sanitize the campaign with
anti-Clinton antiseptic).

Also in complicity were Dems who chose him as their candidate, and Dems
responsible for the lamentable direction Democratic politics has taken --
which brought on the Nader challenge in the first place. Theirfeet should be put in the fire, too. But it remains to be seen
whether the Dem party will learn from its debacle. Pat Williams'
attack on Nader (and those who voted for him) doesn't augur well that the
party will.

Nader a factor only because it's hard to tell the Democrats from
the Republicans

Pat Williams is both right and wrong about Nader's candidacy paving the
way to a win for Bush. He's right in that all the votes that went to Nader
could have made a win for Gore. No doubt of that. Numbers are numbers, and
the numbers add up.

But Nader could never have won those votes if not for the fact that Gore
lost them. As Pat correctly says, facts are facts, and many Americans have
accepted the fact that the Democrats have swayed from their traditional
course onto one more like that of the Republicans. Top Democrats know it,
and have said it publicly, and have done so well before Nader came onto the
presidential scene.

For example, consider what the influential Democratic fund-raiser Felix
Rohatyn told New York's Democratic women 10 years ago. Rohatyn outlined the
major policies and preferences of the Republicans, then asked how the
Democrats differ.

"It is exceedingly hard to tell," he said in answer to his question. The
Democrats, he said, are no longer a party of opposition. Instead, they have
become a power-sharing party. Now, I'm sure that Rohatyn didn't mean that
there are no differences whatsoever, or that the Democrats have merged with
the Republicans in every nuance of every detail. Even if he believed that, I
don't.

The point is that many Americans, including many Democrats other than
Rohatyn, have concluded that the Democrats have gone somewhat helpless in
the face of extremism within the sadly corrupted Republican party.
Looking for remedies, these many Americans have concluded that they must
look beyond the Democratic Party as it exists today, and the Democrats
have willingly surrendered those votes in a conscious choice.

Pat's right. If not for Nader's candidacy, Gore might -- the keyword is
"might" -- have won. But many Democrats across the country have been saying
out loud and in public that this race was Gore's to lose, and that he did a
great job of losing it.

I agree with Mr Williams. Ralph Nader picked a very bad year to
run. Why couldn't he have run in 1996? Or 1984 for that
matter?

Bush's election could well prove to be a mixed blessing for the
Democrats and thus environmentalists (surely fundraising will go up when
Slade Gorton is appointed Interior Secretary). Democrats may even
have a shot at one of the chambers in 2002. Yet the best option
would have been to have a lifelong environmentalist in the White House for
the first time ever (I'd count Teddy Roosevelt as a lifelong hunter).

The only silver lining I see is Gorton's defeat, and the fact that the
Montana governor's race was actually close. This shows some Western
states are shifting. I don't expect much progress in Wyoming, Idaho,
or Utah though.

Now wait just a doggone minute here. The $54 vote is an insult. We
Montanans can't be bought that cheap, and I expect all the Congressional
proponents of "cost-benefit analyses" to rush in with the needed
corrections.

$54? Good grief. It's way more than that. Anyone knows that vote-buying
isn't limited to election years. It's always open season for the vote-buying
industry, and the facts of it are widely recognized all the way from
wilderness to Wall Street, where it's known best as good ol' fashioned pork
barrel spending. To this day, no one's found a better way to keep getting
elected than by artful application of a little bacon grease.

Now, I know that pork barrel spending is not generally named as the
election campaign spending that it is. We usually see pork in terms of the
local jobs that our politicians boast of "creating" for us folks back
home, and I think never at all reported in terms of the benefits it bestows
on the benevolent pols. And I'm sure that some of our political
big-spenders (Republicans as much as the Democrats, mind you) do it entirely
from a generous purity of heart.

But maybe some of our politicians see (or think they see) something in us
that we have always thought we saw in even the best of them. We too can be
bought, just like many of them can. Vote-buying implies willing sellers, after
all. When the pork is counted, the costs of election campaigns will get lots
clearer.

The U.S. Supreme Court's 7-2 decision in favor of ordinary citizens' right
to enforce environmental law, independently of the legal agencies, seems
consistent with the Montana Supreme Court's decision in favor of the ordinary
citizen's right to a clean and healthy environment. Together, the decisions
seem roughly in the same ball park with Republican president Abe Lincoln's
view of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. The
first three words of the U.S. Constitution are, after all, We the
People...

Dissenter Scalia's remark on all this is , if accurately quoted by the New
York Times, that it gives citizens "massive bargaining power." Exactly.

Scalia's remark has some comic appeal, and not just for his moan on
learning that the people do have legitimate and legal paths for bargaining.
After all, he's thought of as part and parcel with the devolutionist-right's
school, in which power is supposed to "devolve" (trickle down?) from central
government to citizen government. What's going on here? A case of being bitten
when you get what you wished for, and then wanting to reject it? Sorry, Judge.
It couldn't have happened to a more loving, tender soul.

Gov. Racicot has been an environmental disaster for the state of
Montana. He opposed I-122, the Clean Water Initiative, favored oil and gas
development of the Rocky Mountain Front and has needlessly slaughtered
thousands of Montana's (and the country's) bison.

He should be exposed and discredited for these and many other actions.

Simply amazing. The story you ran yesterday in which Helena attorney Alan
Joscelyn says that his opposition to the Cherry Creek cutthroat trout project
could be significantly aided by the recent Montana Supreme Court opinion
affirming Montanans' right to a clean and healthful environment includes
enough irony to befit Shakespeare. And the press keeps missing it.

Alan
was one of the attorneys of record on the LOSING side of last week's Supreme
Court opinion. He argued AGAINST restoring clean water protections. He argued
that discharging arsenic into the Blackfoot River in concentrations that
exceeded drinking water standards -- even the standards he helped weaken --
did not harm our right to clean and healthful environment. He was one of the
authors of the very change in the Montana Water Quality law in 1995 that
precipitated the complaint leading to theSupreme Court opinion -- an
opinion he now says could help address his alleged worries about Cherry Creek
being "polluted." As manyconservationists and industry lobbyists in
Montana well know, Alan was a prime architect of the 1995 Montana
Legislature's wholesale gutting of the Montana Clean Water Act, which in turn
produced the challenge that led to the recent Supreme Court decision.

No, I'm not making this up. It actually gets stranger.

You
see, Alan successfully argued in the 1995 Legislature that it was okay to
change Montana's water quality standards to, among other things, increase the
statistical risk of our getting cancer by 100-fold from carcinogens that might
be discharged into drinking water. One carcinogen of special interest to the
mining industry, Alan's client, was even singled out for special treatment:
arsenic. Why, thanks to the work of Alan and others, its risk-based standard
was weakened even further! By 1,000-fold.These changes were directly
designed to benefit the mining industry. Now Alan suggests our constitutional
rights might be violated by using short-lived, organic chemicals that have
been used safely for years in fishery work. In fact, Montana DEQ's analysis on
the light-weight application of antimycin and rotenone proposed in remote
Cherry Creek indicates that the odds of anyone being harmed in an even minute
way are less than, say, being hit by an asteroid in the next five minutes.

But that's okay. We trout conservationists are more than willing to have
this project run through a constitutional screen or any other test the
opponents want to concoct. But one more irony. If the Cherry Creek project
works, it could contribute to keeping westslope cutthroats off the endangered
species list. Populations of this fish have dwindled in part because of the
actions of the mining industry. Alan and the Montana Mining
Association,anotherofficial opponent of the Cherry Creek project, hate
ESA. They say it impedes legitimate mining. Yet when presented with a project
that could increase populations of this disappearing fish -- and thus benefit
their interests -- they rabidly oppose it. Go figure. I like Alan. He's a
nice guy. But all these goofy contradictions makes you wonder if there aren't
some other chemicals at work in some people's water supply.

Re: Billings Gazette editorial saying Montanans are
being trickled on

April 21, 1999

To the Editor:

The 1999 Legislature isn't finished yet.

If you are one of the Montanans who is alarmed by the blue smoke and

mirrors deployed by the legislatures leadership this session, contact

your legislator and urge her/him to give their highest priority to fully

funding HJR 18, an interim study to present legislation to broadcast

future legislatures.

With the reduced level of media coverage Montana's legislature has

received in recent years, it is not surprising the leadership believed

(correctly) they could get away with setting these time bombs under the

future of local government. Making the proceedings of the Montana

Legislature more accessible is one antidote to this type of fiscally

deceitful and irresponsible behavior.

You have until May 1st to contact your legislator and urge them to

support funding for HJR 18.

Jim Parker

Missoula, MT

821-3444

Miscellany

Don't act like a tourist, don't pay

Subject: Montana's proposed tourist tax

Date: Thursday, Nov. 16, 2000From: Tom Robischon, Los
Angeles

There's an old Western sentiment I gew up with in Montana about people
who came to the state with money, whether the Feds or outsiders: Give us
your money and get out. I learned early on not to like tourists, but we all
had to bitterly admit that we depended on them. Now Governor Racicot is
proposing a tax on tourists' meals. That has left me wondering how someone
is going to know that it is a tourist's meal so they can slap the tax on it.
Ask them if they are tourists? Look for those undeniable signs of that lowly
species? If I am asked the next time I visit Montana, I will say I am not a
tourist: I was born and raised there. And I will try even harder not to act
like a tourist.

Arizona proposition would require developers to pay costs

Subject: Arizona's growth-control initiative

Date: Thursday, Nov. 2, 2000From: Nikolai RamseyGrand Canyon
Trust

Proposition 202, the Citizens' Growth Management Initiative, is about who
decides Arizona's future -- local voters, or developers and politicians --
and about who should pay for the costs associated with new development --
taxpayers or developers. Proposition 202 requires a local vote on all
growth-management plans and major amendments, and it requires that
developers pay for the costs of roads, sewers, schools, and fire and police
facilities needed by their new developments.

Proposition 202 is supported by more than 50 organizations and small
businesses who believe local voters should decide how their communities
develop and grow. Citizens for Growth Management includes the League of
Women Voters of Arizona, the Arizona Public Health Association, Grand Canyon
Trust, the Sierra Club's Grand Canyon Chapter, Trout Unlimited - Zane Grey
Chapter, Arizona Wildlife Federation, and the Neighborhood Coalition of
Greater Tucson, among others.

In addition to requiring voter-approved growth-management plans,
Proposition 202 requires that cities and counties establish where growth is
going to occur by designating growth areas defined by boundaries drawn to
accommodate up to 10 year's worth of growth.

Proposition 202 can help save taxpayers money by requiring developers to
pay for the costs of roads, schools, police and fire facilities, etc.
associated with new developments, and by giving counties the authority to
regulate wildcat subdivisions. Pima County estimates that these wildcat
subdivisions cost the county taxpayers $35 to $55 million each year in
infrastructure costs alone.

This could be the last battle for our future and our quality of life in
Arizona. Air pollution and traffic congestion are bad, and our schools have
deteriorated as a result of rapid and unchecked growth. In many areas, our
water supply is overburdened and police and fire protection services are
spread too thin.

Opponents of Proposition 202 have done a lot of squawking about the
initiative and spent buckets of money in an effort to confuse voters. If you
believed their advertising, we will all be living in high rises or using
port-a-potties, and of course the "evil greedy" lawyers will line their
pockets with cash.

Proposition 202 will change the way we make decisions about Arizona's
growth ˇ a much needed change that will help us protect our quality of life
and protect open space.

Development interests are clearly out of step with the desires of local
voters and are certainly out of step with investors regarding growth
management. PricewaterhouseCoopers had this to say about Phoenix in Emerging
Trends in Real Estate 2000, "You can still wager on suburban 'growth path
investing' in ... Dallas and Phoenix, but it's a risky play." Contrast that
with what they say about Portland, Ore., a city that has had
growth-management in place for over 20 years, "Portland has growth controls,
which investors increasingly covet, and excellent quality-of-life
perceptions."

More business interests understand the necessity of protecting our
quality of life by investing in communities. Consider this Portland example:
If Intel exceeds 5,000 full-time manufacturing workers at its facilities, it
will pay an impact fee of $1,000 per additional worker per year. Moreover,
failure to deal with the problem of sprawl will only drive away prospective
employers. In 1998, Hewlett Packard decided not to expand a 1200-employee
facility in the Atlanta area citing problems associated with poorly planned
growth, concerns like traffic congestion.

Opponents claim Proposition 202 will lead to more litigation on land use,
but it's these development interests who are suing over those decisions
right now. They sued Apache Junction over school impact fees, alleging that
cities do not have the authority to impose impact fees for schools. For
years, they have also helped defeat legislation that would allow school
impact fees. (Proposition 202 authorizes school impact fees.)

And it
is developers who are challenging local communities' efforts to protect open
space lands in Arizona. What developers are concerned about is that under
202 regular citizens can take action to require that their elected officials
enforce voter-approved growth management plans.

Proposition 202 charges the state attorney general with enforcing the act
ˇensuring that our government follows the law. However, like some of our
most important laws, the initiative also includes a "citizen suit" provision
that allows individual citizens to ensure that elected officials abide by
this needed growth management measure.

Citizen suit provisions have been part of the federal environmental laws
for more than 25 years and have been recognized as an important supplement
to the enforcement of those laws. Indeed, here in Arizona the citizen suit
provision of the Clean Air Act has been instrumental in ensuring that a
recalcitrant Phoenix area comply with the law and adopt measures to improve
air quality.

Proposition 202 only allows a suit if there is a violation of the Act and
simply allows a court order requiring the defendant to follow the law. It
does not provide for money damages or any incentive for a flurry of
lawsuits. It will not allow someone who is unaffected by the law to sue ˇ in
other Arizona laws where it says "any citizen" or "any person," the court
interpretation is that it is someone who has been impacted.

Proposition 202 may actually lead to fewer lawsuits. Under the current
system, city and county governments can (and do) make rezoning decisions on
an ad hoc basis. Therefore, when a controversial rezoning is proposed, it
often results in a face-off between local residents and the developer. No
matter what the city or county decides, it may result in litigation by the
"losing" side.

Proposition 202 will limit these recurring face-offs because the growth
management plans, which are subject to voter approval, provide both
developers and residents with predictability and curtail the power of
developers to pressure local government to rezone property so that it is
inconsistent with the plan.

Elected officials have, too often in the past, demonstrated an
unwillingness to follow laws passed by the people through initiatives. Given
this history, it is only reasonable that Proposition 202, which represents a
shift in power to the voters, contains a citizen enforcement provision.
Indeed, if our elected officials had the political will to deal with the
issue of growth management, Proposition 202 would have been unnecessary.

Probably the most irresponsible thing opponents are touting regarding 202
is the idea that the Legislature has or will adequately address growth
management issues. The legislature, even with the threat of an initiative,
has been unwilling to do anything meaningful, and in fact, they have come
very close to passing bills that would make it impossible for counties to
regulate lot splits or for cities to implement more protective zoning.

If Arizona is to have meaningful growth management, it will have to come
from the people as it is quite clear that our elected officials are not up
to the task. We strongly urge your support of Proposition 202.

If you build it, they will come. If you build it, they won't come. It
is being built. And believe me, they are coming.

Sound goofy? Like maybe something some of our less-than-inspired
politicos here in Montana would say? Well, like the homophobes in Idaho,
it is exactly the message that many Montana legislators, both state and
federal, send with their extreme right wing statements, actions, and
legislation.

et me explain. What is being built? The answer: Montana's reputation as
an attractive and inviting location for bigots, racists, and
anti-government kooks of all stripes. Unfortunately, it's not just because
of the Freemen, Unabomber, and the militia. Sen. Conrad Burns uses racial
epithets with alacrity, Lt. Gov. Judy Martz sends a shovel to Nevada, Rep.
Scott Orr of Libby calls for a day of "extreme civil disobedience" while
proposing to raise the Confederate flag, our Legislature nearly passes
legislation calling for gays to be registered as sex offenders and refuses
to rescind archaic laws regarding homosexual activity between consenting
adults, and on and on and on.

It's a group effort, but it is being built. The message is really not
very subtle. And, of course, there are those who respond accordingly. And
they are coming.

And who won't come if you build it? Answer: all the high-tech
industries that these same politicians want to attract, because guess
what? Many people in high-tech industries are minorities or gay. They are
very educated, sophisticated people who want their kids to be raised in a
secure environment of tolerance, not in an area where an angry man feels
comfortable gunning down a black man in a rest area for simply being
black.

These homophobic and right wing politicians need to understand that you
can't have it both ways. You can't project an image of extreme intolerance
and expect a great deal of interest from companies with a diverse
workforce wanting to relocate here.

Ask an out-of-stater some time about their thoughts on Montana. They
will probably tell your that not only a river, but also intolerance, runs
through it.

Read the story. Angry mob takes law into their own hands. Uses the
cover of "states rights". Ignores rule of law. Believes that they are
right and the majority of the people are wrong. Claim that their
"traditional" way of life is threatened. Lashes out at federal
government.

Sounds very reminiscent of the racists in the Old South, right? But
these are the shovel brigaders of today. These poor, hate-filled ignorant
souls don't understand that the rest of the country has moved on well
beyond this issue, and that they are stuck in their antebellum ways so to
speak.

It was morally wrong to enslave other human beings, just as it is
morally wrong to abuse resources that belong to all Americans. As our
natural resources grow more scarce, most people understand that our wild
places grow more valuable because they are healthy places that supply us
with things essential to life, such as water. The water comes from "up
there," so to speak.

So, what did we learn from Jarbridge. We learn that these folks can
mobilize an angry mob of 500 rednecks. And while this may be a terrific
way to recruit talent for a banjo orchestra skilled in the theme music
from "Deliverance," it is a pathetic way to determine public policy
regarding our shared national lands. The brigaders stand ready to replace
Big Brother with Redneck Mothers. Check out the Web site
www.edfp.com/jarbridge for some of their more incoherent meadnerings about
how Clinton's infidelities empower them to claim public lands as their
own.

I read the Arizona Republic article with interest. It is an interesting
perspective after the Seattle Times' four-issue feature last week about
the economic impact of illegal immigration in Washington. The Times' own
description of this series, titled "Under Two Flags":

Monday, June 20, 2000: Illegal farmworkers toil in Washington fields
for decades to feed their families in Mexico. Mexican foremen recruit new
crews of workers north.

Tuesday, June 21, 2000: As workers gain citizenship and buy homes, they
help new workers into the country. Waves of migration are changing the
face of rural Washington.

Wednesday, June 22, 2000: As older farmworkers retire to Mexico, their
grandchildren settle in America. Villages in Mexico are transformed by
dollars sent home.

I highly recommend the Times' series because it came closest to my own
experience of living/working in Los Angeles, a city that functions only
because of illegal immigration. Seattle also has a sizable population of
Hispanic citizens and illegal workers, although it is not (yet) as visibly
dependent on illegal laborers to function.

Clearly, this is an issue of great importance for the region. We need
to develop a coherent policy about immigration that recognizes both the
reality at the borders and the reality inland throughout the West.

If stewards of the land really cared, they'd support monument
status

Subject: Missouri Breaks as a national monumentDate: Monday,
May 15, 2000From: Joanne Muretta,

Great Falls, MT

The Montana Legislature's special session Missouri River Breaks
Resolution claims that federal monument designation is not needed because
"undaunted stewards care for the land.

But let's consider the source and tell the unabridged story. Remember
what this whole area of Montana was like when Lewis & Clark passed
through a short200 years ago. Then came trappers, buffalo hunters,
miners, loggers, shepherds, cattle barons, and sodbusters. This short
grass prairie has not been the same since.

Farming is the prevalent activity today, and where the land isn't
suited for farming because there are too many ravines or it's too rocky or
the soil istoo shallow, there's ranching. Some 40 years ago when the
last natural fertility of the soil was lost, instead of giving the land a
rest we "socked the spurs to it by using fertilizers and chemicals to
force continued production. We export our future to Asia to support
billions who depleted their land. We must each be responsible for our own
ecosystem.

Who are these "undaunted stewards" that care so much for the land? I
don't know many. I farmed for thirty years, and was not doing right by the
land. They should be honest about their true intentions to use the land
and personally profit as they see fit.

Most ranchers have some wheat ground and take federal subsides. Those
who speak of their private rights and a federal plot to take their land
while pocketing massive federal subsidies are being unfair to taxpayers
who have bought this land many times over.

Undaunted stewards? What kind of steward allows their cattle to
overgraze public land, to prevent cottonwood regeneration by eating
seedlings along river banks, or to use the Bullwacker yearlong resulting
in cockleburs and cheat grass.

The Missouri Breaks Region is precious and deserves everyone's
stewardship. If the "undaunted" were serious, they would support efforts
to conserve the wild nature of this area. They would applaud federal
proscriptions on federal land like monument status and wilderness
designation.

I'm used to hearing people described as bleeding heart liberals. After
reading Skinner's letter, I think a new category is order, perhaps
something like "bleeding heart wackos."

These are the helicopter-beanie-wearing guys who planned the Libby
protest and their apologists like Skinner who think the world owes them a
living off public lands. Cryall they want, but this is still America
were people succeed or fail based upon their own merits, not upon how much
of a public resource held in common for the public good they are allowed
to steal.

They are no different than anyone else who loses a job. They need to
get some guts and go out find a new one, or starve while crying in their
beer.

Take it from a lifelong working man who has lost his share of jobs and
had to scramble to make a living in Montana, a bleeding heart is a
bleeding heart. And a heart that bleeds for itself is a whiner.

Rumors from the recent whirling disease symposium have been confirmed:
$1 million in federal funds for whirling disease research have been cut
from the Clinton administration's proposed budget. The timing of this cut
couldn't be worse. Scientific finds from the recent symposium in Coeur
d'Alene show great promise, and researchers are focused on exciting
prospects for management and control of this deadly disease. We need help
in getting these funds restored and increased.The Whirling Disease
Foundation of Bozeman sent out letters to more than 100 senators and
representative from states affected by the disease. Foundation President
Chris Francis has been in contact with Rep. Ralph Regula's office
regarding the issue. We have also communicated with the offices of Montana
Sens. Conrad Burns and Max Baucus, and they have offered their assistance
in getting the funding restored.

There are some important meetings and deadlines on the horizon. On Feb.
29, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt defends the department's budget
before the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, and on March 2, the
budget goes to the House of Representatives for consideration. We need to
do our work quickly, and we hope members of the public will help in
contacting some of the key people involved in the budget process and
assist in applying the necessary pressure to restore and increase the
whirling disease research funding.

There's no more effective method to influence the process than to have
a legislator hear from one of his or her constituents.

I heard Dan Kemmis speak once. It was at the Montana Wilderness
Association meeting, back in 1980, if I remembercorrectly. After his
inspirational talk about the land and people of Montana, I wanted to go
find John Denver and help him sing"Wild Montana Skies." But that was
20 years ago. Denver's dead, and the song was based on myth.

Since that Sunday morning talk Kemmis gave, he has become famous in
conservative and dainty liberal circles for hisbook Community and the
Politics of Place. I wish it were so -- cooperative neighbors settling
their differences with discussion, insight, empathy, creativity. But
that's not the way things are in the interior West, nor are they likely to
be. They probably never were that way.

Denver begins, "He was born in the Bitterroot Valley in the early
morning rain. . . wild geese over the water, headingnorth to their
home again. Bringing a warm wind from the south, bringing the first taste
of the spring. His mother tookhim to her breast, and softly she did
sing. . . "Oh Montana, give this child a home, give him the love of a good
family,and a woman of his own, give him a fire in his heart, give a
light in his eyes, give him the wild wind for a brother, andthe wild
Montana skies.

If anyone thinks there is community in Montana, they should visit the
Bitterroot Valley today, scene of some ofNorman MacLean's famed
literature.

Today's Bitterroot might inspire, "He was born in the Bitterroot Valley
in the early morning haze. . . SUV for his cradle,heading north to the
condo again. Planting knapweed in its tracks, sprouting the first green of
the spring. His mothertook him to her breast, and softly she did sing.
. . "Oh militia, give this boy a gun, give him White friends for his
brothers, and tax cut for his home."

Much the same is true throughout the West. Community is gone. Its
residents have little notion that it ever existed. Popular history goes
something like this: the West was settled by the cowboys and the bandits,
but things were kept in order by John Wayne, with helpful assistance from
Buffalo Bill, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, the Lone Ranger, Wyatt Earp, and
Ronald Reagan. Later a prettier West emerged where young Norm MacLean and
his brother spent their youth drinking and flycasting on the Big
Blackfoot.

Did that community ever exist? Yes, certainly more than in the popular
history. There were people who struggled tohelp each other survive in
the awful company towns, and in the isolated farm communities. Community
was oftenstrongest in the vast patriarchy of the Mormon Church. There
it still exists to an ever attenuating degree. But whereBrigham Young
mandated broad streets and room for gardens, these avenues now lead to
winding roads, punched intothe mountainsides, ending in bland
culdesacs, signed "Private Property, Keep Out." It's not clear that anyone
even lives here let alone has a sense of community.

But one thing most people in the Interior West love is the open space
and public lands. Poll after poll shows themajority loves national
parks, the wilderness (by various definitions), and wildlife.

The Wall Street Journal , Jan. 21, has a story, "National GOP Survey
Says Western Voters Strongly SupportProtection of National Forests."
Of course, those westerners polled are mostly city folks, not "real
Westerners". Thereal West, the rural West, is gradually fading under
the strip malls, recreational subdivisions, and noxious weeds. It
isdying from the devotion to a fundamentalist view of property rights
that is the opposite of community and in turn leads to those very
subdivisions.

If you grew up in the West like I did, it's painful to see the change
and awful to realize the sterility of the mythHollywood created for
us. One place where things are still pretty much right is the public
lands, where no one lives.They are run by the federal government, and
run increasingly well and without the input of the local politicians. This
isa legacy of Bill Clinton and his "Gifford Pinchot," chief forester
Mike Dombeck.

Many sneer at Bill Clinton's two trips to Jackson Hole, including some
environmentalists, but people who met withhim there say he quickly saw
that the border of Yellowstone Park was no place for the New World
Mine,environmentally or politically. Like Theodore Roosevelt, Clinton
came West and recognized the blindness of most ofthe local
politicians. Where they could not see, the President could. Perhaps all he
could see were votes, but I think hesaw much more. At any rate, should
we criticize him for embodying representative democracy, and now expanding
onthe practice? The survey continues, "A staggering 72 percent of the
voters surveyed in the West support Clinton'sroadless areas protection
proposal. Nationwide, 76 percent of those polled favor the Clinton
administration plan, announced in October 1999, while just 19 percent
opposed it."

The Democrats are in great decline in the interior West. Many,
including Kemmis, attribute this to the nationalDemocrats being out of
touch with their Western constituents on land issues. It's true, that
Clinton did not win theWest, but he ran ahead of most of the local
Democrats whose message was "?" Al Gore won't carry the West, but
hewill do better in the West than the Western Democrats, who won't
take a stand to protect the public lands. Today'sarticle continues,
"Support was widespread even among those who are the president's biggest
critics - 62 percent of Republicans support the plan, as do 65 percent of
self-described conservatives. Regionally, westerners support the plan by a
3-to-1 margin."

I don't mean to be harsh, but I've sat down in these vaunted consensus
groups, and spent my time when I could havebeen fishing or mountain
climbing. We all agreed we don't like the changes in the West, but we
didn't agree from wherewe came, where we were, or where we should go.
Oh, yes, and after much discussion we didn't get to like each other,
butwe knew liked the open spaces, "the wild Montana skies."

Thank you, Dave Skinner, for promoting our website to a national
audience. We could never afford to buy the kind of publicity you have
given us. Now thousands of HCN readers from around the nation will be
turning on their computers and going to www.new-west-research.org to find
out what the fuss is all about.

Skinner and his anti-environmental friends may not want the public to
know who's asking government agents to poison, trap, and gun down coyotes,
bears, foxes, bobcats, cougars, beavers, prairie dogs, and other native
species, but the public has a right to know. This is not just our opinion
-- it's the law. You can't hide your dirty deeds behind bogus "privacy"
excuses anymore.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press agrees with us. In a
recent letter to USDA Secretary Dan Glickman, the Reporter's Committee
stated: "It is a paramount concern for environmental groups - and all
citizens - to know with whom the USDA is working to manage wildlife
populations. The only way for environmental groups to successfully track
the influence ranchers and others have on USDA predator control
initiatives is for them to monitor participation in such programs. The
continued release of the names, addresses, and phone numbers of ranchers
who participate in predator control programs is essential for
environmental groups and others to continue studying the effects of such
programs. The Reporters Committee urges the USDA to continue releasing
this basic information and to keep adhering to the spirit of open
government articulated in the Freedom of Information Act."

Aside from the public's inherent right to know, there is also a public
health and safety benefit to exposing these names and addresses. Poisons
set out by government wildlife killers, such as M-44 sodium cyanide
devices, can also kill humans and domestic animals. Steel-jaw traps can
seriously injure or kill your beloved cat, dog or horse. Aerial gunning
can frighten and endanger both humans and animals on adjacent properties.
Poisoned birds can fall dead on your property, as they did by the
thousands on Albuquerque backyards last December.

The government's wildlife killing program, perversely dubbed "Wildlife
Services," is a controversial government program with a track record of
lawlessness and recklessness. Greater accountability and public oversight
is desperately needed. If it's such a great program, why keep it shrouded
in secrecy?

Skinner frets that those who collaborate with government wildlife
killers will be harassed now that their names and addresses have been
exposed. That's the same kind of whining we hear from pedophiles and crack
dealers who don't want their identities known to the public.

Nevertheless, the community has a right to express its outrage against
child abusers, animal abusers, and others who violate community
sensibilities. The slaughter of our native wildlife is senseless and
shameful and the public has a right to be outraged about it.

"White flight" more a matter of inconsiderate neighbors, not
diversity

This email is in response to the article by Richard Manning, regarding
"white flight" to rural areas. As I sat here in Texas, reading the "white
flight" article I was in physical pain. It wasn't inflicted from within my
home or even from on my property. The pain was due to the "person" across
the street who was running a vehicle stereo system. Not just any system,
but one of the dozens in the area, designed to do one thing, and one thing
only.... be louder than the others.

Now let me put this in perspective. I'm no old foggie, and I listen to
"loud" rock music daily. This noise (bass notes) was so loud as to
actually cause major physical pain in my eardrums, across the street, with
all my doors and windows closed. I repeat actual physical pain. We go
through this every day in varying degrees from one or more in this
neighborhood. There's hardly an hour that goes by that we aren't bothered
or awakened by extreme noise, despite calls to the police.

Now we get to the point. I'm one of those about to take part in "white
flight" as the media likes to call it. I'm white, proud of it and refuse
to apologize for it, despite being politically incorrect for my stand.
White flight? No diversity? Yes, after going through the better part of a
years constant audio assault by non-whites in the neighborhood
(neighborhood isnow "minority" by a vast "majority" and none of the
noise makers is white), I'm ready (and thrilled) to be leaving. I've been
driven out by the noise.

This used to be a quiet "white middle class" neighborhood. Now we
whites are the vast minority and this is what we get for the "diversity"
that the media seems to love. I say to the media, "keep the diversity
yourself," if that's what it takes to get one day of peace and quiet. I
came back into this area from a (quiet)"white" enclave, with a great
attitude and desire to "embrace the diversity," as it were. Now I can't
wait to move back out. If the minorities want to be accepted by the white
community they need to stop making life miserable in the communities where
they live (and blaming "racism").

Obviously they aren't all guilty of personally causing the problems
(we have black friends next door), but most rarely do anything to help put
an end to the obvious problems. Anyone who's not part of the cure is part
of the problem (to paraphrase). It's time that the media started focusing
on the real underlying problems instead of the symptoms. I've traveled
enough to find the same sort of problems elsewhere, so I can say with
certainty that this is not an isolated problem.

By the way, the noise-makers are obviously not poverty stricken (new
expensive vehicles - $2,000 stereo systems), so that puts an end to use of
the poverty card. Last weekend I left town to escape the noise and was
"driven out" of a state park by the same sort of noise, where the pavilion
was rented to a "minority" group running two massive amplifiers
(outdoors), each large enough to serve the Astrodome. The whole RV park
had to endure the massive noise all day and into late night. Although I
had paid for the night, I left because of the noise just before midnight.
"White flight" again. My fault? I doubt it.

Most of the so called "racial" problems today have little to do
with the "color" of a persons skin but rather their ability to live in
harmony with, and respect the rights of others. If you really want to
help, please use the media to tell the real story for a change - not the
politically correct version.

Larry Craig (Denver Post op-ed, 11/1/99)
complains that it is the national environmental groups who have caused him
the most frustration. His complaint is echoed by hundreds of small, local
environmental groups around North America, and the situation just might be
worst here in the USA.

For decades now, local groups have spotted forest
problems first, researched the facts, developed solutions, and forged
ahead with the publicity needed to let the larger public know what's
happening. Then the rich and big environmental groups wade in, compromise
the landscapes that locals fought to save, and declare victory in
their own name.

Now, of course, Larry Craig pays no more attention
to local environmentalists than he does to the nationals. Like Dan Kemmis
in Montana, Craig grasps at political straws by blaming outsiders for his
woes. It's nothing new. The psychiatrist Carl Jung commented that, for
some people, the devil always lives on the other side of the mountain.
We see this same generic problem in the immigrant-bashing right-wingers of
this world, and we see too in the dictator who keeps the folks at home
under heel by warning them of threats from other nations.

And so it's no surprise to see it applied here in
the Northern Rockies. It's an old problem, and one you'd think the press
had got hip to by now, but every generation needs to learn these things
anew.

Gravel pits threaten aquifers

Subject: Gravel pits are reclamation
problem

From: Larry Campbell

Date: Tuesday, Oct. 19, 1999

The article regarding the proliferation of gravel pits and their
associated environmental problems was a good contribution to public
understanding of a problem so common it hardly registers on public
awareness. Each pit that intercepts groundwater stands as an open
sore to admit contamination into the aquifer. Also, in our semi-arid
region, ponds and lakes lose approximately three feet of water
annually to evaporation. As I watch the acreage of gravel pit ponds
grow, particularly beside the highways, I see a growing threat to
the water quality and quantity of our aquifers.

American Family Publishers has infected the
elderly with its owningenious brucellosis virus. Logic meted to the
bison dictates:every single employee of American Family Publishers
should beshot, their heads hung as trophies in some great hall under
atowering grizzly bear. Still, the law of the United States stands
immutable. The con-artists will get off with a slap on the
wristand the buffalo will lose their lives.

Susan Ewing ends her apology for living on a ranchette with this
thought,

"Perhaps I can trade the 2.5 children I didn't have, plus my generous
annual

contribution to Planned Parenthood, for the promise that the next

illustration of sprawl in the press leaves out my beautiful
ranchette."

I don't begrudge Ms. Ewing her beautiful piece of Montana but I worry
a

little about implications of what she is saying. It's a common notion
that

our environmental problems are caused by too many people, and it's no
doubt

true that the more of us there are the more we need to think about one

another and accommodate one another. It seems simple that if we could
just

wish away all those other people then we could do whatever gives us
pleasure

and life would be good.

But that way of thinking keeps leading toward attempts to use
government to

regulate people's decisions about fertility. For people who believe
social

norms are best established by the workings of rational bureaucracies,
this

comes to seem a perfectly reasonable approach. But it seems a little
ironic

that the same people who believe governments should have no opinions
about

women's reproductive rights often lend support to government policies
that

interfere with family decisions about fertility. Ms. Ewing said no
such

thing, of course, but others who see population as the "big" problem
have.

There are also other things to think about. Demographer Nicholas
Eberstadt

projects that within two generations, three-fifths of Italy's children
will

have no siblings, cousins, aunts, or uncles. In Scandinavia today,
which has

gone a long way toward reducing the nuclear family's role as the basis
of

society, almost half of all households are comprised of single
individuals.

Is the best way to ensure that we have cottontails under our cars to
build a

lonely society of folks without strong kinship ties? I confess that as
a

person with six siblings and five children, I have difficulty
imagining what

such a society would mean.

And then there are other social realities. Ms. Ewing implies that a
cultural

change in our attitudes toward children might solve our environmental

problems, but by far the most powerful way to affect culture is
through

reproduction. Though it doesn't happen quickly, people with high
fertility,

Mormons and Catholics in the West, for example, tend to spread their

cultural values very effectively while those with low fertility tend
to be

pushed aside. To a large extent, the future will be shaped by people
who

reproduce at a high rate and teach their children, far more deeply
than

schools do, what we should want, what we should fear, how we should
react to

crises, and how we should interact with the land and with others.

I suspect that if the West of the future has both good society and
healthy

nature, it will not be because we have stopped reproducing. It will be

rather because the West is populated by folks who enjoy seeing
neighbors and

children nearby as much as they enjoy chickadees, and that they find

graceful ways to live together in clusters, without dreams of
isolating

themselves from one another by twenty-acre buffer zones.

If Ms. Ewing were writing about the very real pleasures of sitting on
a

front porch, visiting with folks who walked by and observing the
fascinating

nesting rituals of neighbors, I think she would be moving us closer to
a

peaceful future.

Michael Umphrey

St. Ignatius, MT 59865

Re: the Road to Ruin

April 29, 1999

The majority of citizens on the Flathead Reservation are NOT happy with
the tribes' position on highway 93. That includes the majority of members
(60%) and the vast majority of non-members. If you and the Missoulian are
going to be mouthpieces for the tribal council, please clearly state it so
people can recognize propaganda when they see it.

Katherine Mitchell

St. Ignatius

Re: Bison captured outside Yellowstone

April 15, 1999

To the editor:

I hope the buffalo will not be killed.

Gloria Phillip

Missoula, MT

Re: Rafting in Yellowstone from the
Bozeman Daily Chronicle, posted on Headwaters 4/8/99.

April 9, 1999

Me me me. All these selfish recreationists. And conservationists.

A better plan would be to use the boating as a means to leverage
decreases in

other impacts (how slight the chance of that succeeding).

Timothy Bechtold

Missoula, MT

Re: Quenching the desert air from the
Arizona Republic.

Monday, March 30

I've bookmarked your newspaper and just finished reading the article on
Lake

Tempe. It's all politics there. The city is really nice as a small down
town

place to shop and hangout at night. Good bars, coffee shops, etc.

The lake is going to pull in a lot of visitors and more money. The city
lives off

ASU and Cardinal football fall and winter. This would bring a lot of
spring and

summer (very hot but that's why the lake) visitors.

I understand it started with the Pope's visit 20 years ago. The city
cleaned up

and started to rebuild. Cardinals came, Fiesta Bowl (national
championships)

and it kept growing. There is talk of losing the Cards to a sister city
and

Tempe has some plans to redesign the stadium to keep them. Oh yeah -
with